He could not contain his disappointment with the discovery: “ Shellabear translated the bible for my country but today Indonesia had beaten us to it.” The Malaysia he knew needed a Shellabear-inspired translation more urgently than Indonesia. His ministry fraternity was showcasing the new Indonesian translation that was revised from Shellabear’s 1912 Malay Bible.
The pastor visited Bogor in 1999 and was stunned to come across a new Bible translation in Indonesian. It started when a Malaysian pastor visited Indonesia. Hence the pressing need for a new Malay translation of the Bible for a new generation of readers.īut the Malay project in Elly’s lifetime had to do with very unusual events. Further, the Bible message needed to be conveyed in their heart language of the Malay-speaking peoples in the land, with minimal cross-cultural issues. After six decades, the two varieties of the Malay language were strikingly different from each other in form, expression, terminology and grammatical structure.Īn unhappy result of this divergent development was, indigenous students in the East Malaysian states who were influenced by the Indonesian version of the Bible suffered serious impediments when sitting for public national-level Malay language examinations in the 1980’s and 1990’s.Īs language evolved with time, words and expressions deviated in meaning over time, while newer and more semantically precise words came into existence. However, after Malaysia and Indonesia achieved nationhood in the fifties, the standard variety of Malay in the two countries began to diverge along two separate pathways. As time went by, many significant Bible translations were completed in the Malay language, namely Albert Ruyll translation of the Gospels (1629), Leijdecker translation (1733), Klinkert translation (1879), Shellabear translation (1912), and Bode translation (1938). Malay was the lingua franca for both Malaya and a large part of the Indonesian archipelago since the 15th century. In the 1990s, a Bible translator turned the spotlight on its sentimental significance when he brought a large treasure trove of Shellabear’s materials from Holland to Bandung to be used as primary resource for his fellow workers. In the first half of the twentieth century, Shellabear's 1912 translation of the Bible was the regular Malay bible widely across both sides of the Straits of Malacca. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1996] Among Islamicists his contributions as an editor and writer for The Moslem World journal, and his studies of mystical texts in Malay, are still acknowledged.” “ Scholars know him best as an avid collector and publisher of classical Malay manuscripts, and as the author of seminal studies of the Malay language…. His name was synonymous with a legacy of notable works in the Malay language: In his time, he pursued a lifelong study of classical Malay literature and Islam.
Shellabear set himself apart from the majority of bible translators, through his appreciation of the Malay culture and mindset. Atuk co-translated major portions of the 1912 Malay Bible with Shellabear Elly co-translated major portions of a new Malay Bible that was inspired by the Shellabear legacy and published a hundred years after 1912.
There were striking similarities between Atuk and Elly Atuk was a recognized and respected teacher in the Malay language in his time, while Elly was well-known in the world of writing in her time.
Together, they translated the Malay Bible in the Jawi script. In 1903, Atuk met with a Bible translator in British Malaya - William Girdlestone Shellabear, and took up the role of co-translator. Long before she teamed up with Hua to co-translate the Bible, Elly's engagement in the Malay Bible was miraculously tethered to none other than her own predecessor, Atuk, a graduate of the highest institution of education in the Malay educational system at the time. In what was Tanah Melayu for some, literary legends marked the line of descent. This is an edited extract from A CENTURY IN ECLIPSE - The Story of the Malay Bible, an upcoming book that gives a first-hand account of the long and intense journey taken to birth the Alkitab Versi Borneo in 2016.Įlly’s calling was connected to a legacy. The Story of AVB (Part 2) - The Malay Bible
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