Translations are tricky things. Take for example, what can be found in the Bahasa Malaysia subtitles of the hit animé show Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅の刃).In one episode, a character defeats another and says, “お前にはまだ早い”. I don’t understand Japanese, but if I run that through Google Translate, I get “It’s too early for you”. You might expect the BM version to read “Masih terlalu awal untuk awak”, or even “Kamu masih belum bersedia” might be acceptable. However, the BM translator for this particular episode decided to try something a bit more gempak (awesome) and opted for, “K**** belum berbulu dah sibuk menggatal”.

If you’re wondering, the “K” word I obscured here is a body part that is not fit to print in a family newspaper. (And no, it’s not “ketiak” or “kepala”, ie, armpit or head.) Something was clearly lost in translation.

But translation is not about converting sentences word for word, and rearranging them so they make grammatical sense. It’s about using the right words to convey the original intent, and sometimes a direct translation is not what is wanted.

So a phrase like, “Go to hell” can be translated in various ways. It ranges from “Pergi matilah” (literally, “go and die”) in the animation film Rango, to “Awak silap” (“you are mistaken”) in The Bourne Supremacy, to “Nasiblah” (like a sarcastic “good luck”) in The Matrix.

And then there are things that have layers of complexity which are impossible to translate accurately. Most recently in the movie Shang Chi and the Ten Rings, when Akwafina’s character says, “I don’t speak Chinese”, Ronnie Liu’s character replies, “All good, I speak ABC”.

In BM it’s translated to “Tidak apa, saya cakap ABC”, and to a certain extent, the joke works. But for Chinese-Americans who watch this movie, the line is even funnier, because “ABC” is understood to also stand for “American-born Chinese”, a phrase that carries lots of cultural baggage. So without context, it’s difficult to really translate this line correctly.

Which is how I feel when I read that some quarters have likened the Malaysian 5G rollout to the 1MDB financial scandal. I feel like I’m in a bit of a quandary because part of the work I do is to write about technology, and I kind of view it as a translation of sorts, to take something very technical and (for lack of a better term) very sciency, and write about it in a way that a layperson would understand.

So I can do a fairly good job about how the 5G rollout in Malaysia has been very convoluted over the last two years. However, just because it has not been a straight line implementation-wise, it doesn’t mean that the project is crooked.

In July 2019, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission recommended that 5G should be rolled out by a single consortium of multiple telcos. In February 2020, the Pakatan Harapan government fell, and in July 2020, the then Communications and Multimedia minister instead assigned the rollout to five telcos. However, complaints began that this was not done through an open tender, there were accusations of a lack of transparency, and one of the five telcos was accused of not having a good enough track record.

In November 2020, the minister said that the 5G rollout would only happen in late 2022, but in February 2021, the then Prime Minister announced that the rollout will be done by a state-owned Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) under the Finance Ministry.

Given the musical chairs nature of the Malaysian government since early 2020, it’s perhaps not surprising that there has been some - shall we say - inconsistency about how and why the 5G rollout should happen.

The heart of the debate is whether a rollout of public services is best done through private companies or through a government body. There are valid arguments for both sides. However, I think it’s somewhat naive to assume that an open tender to telcos to build a network would somehow be less prone to corruption than one done under the aegis of the Finance Ministry.

Certainly, what I don’t expect to see is one ministry’s officials standing up in Parliament and saying the implementation of a national project was taken out of their hands, and then days later to see the Finance Minister respond on Facebook with a list of the various meetings between the ministries concerned on this very project.

It’s like a football player complaining that he’s not allowed to play football when he’s already part of the team that’s on the field. And then a teammate pointing out, we didn’t like how you originally wanted to play and when we changed, you were at all the meetings and you agreed to play this new way. Meanwhile, players on the opposing team are supporting the first player in his claim that he’s not part of the team (even if he has a key role to play), and saying that perhaps we should invite other players from more teams to take part to make things fair.

So I can’t help but feel that there is some intentional mistranslation going on here. And because this is politics, it’s very probably done with an objective that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Which means all this hand-wringing is less about the future of 5G and the transparency of the project and more likely to be about the future of whomever is saying these things.

Who needs dodgy translations with words that begin with “K”? If you had subtitles in Parliament showing the true intent of the MP speaking, it would make for very entertaining viewing indeed.

In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at lifestyle@thestar.com.my. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/living/2021/12/30/translating-the-confusion-over-the-5g-rollout-in-malaysia