Old Tajung Keris(es?)

David · 19th February 2020, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mickey the Finn

Google Translator leads me to believe that "angkup randu" means something like "operator's manual for tweezers" or "hand-operated tweezers". Please don't feel obligated to reply. I'm sure the matter will sort itself out in time.

Well, i don't mean to keep this resurrected thread alive for long (though it is nice to see these tajong once again

), but i will just say that Google Translator knows jack about Malay based languages. You will find the most ridiculous translation or words and phrases almost every time. It is near useless for understanding Bahasa Indonesian, Javanese or Malay.
Carry on!

A. G. Maisey · 19th February 2020, 08:56 PM

I think most keris people would know this,its pretty basic knowledge, but maybe some of the new boys might not, so it is worth mentioning I guess.

There is a type of Solo mendak that is named "angkup randu" because it carries the angkup randu motif, which is pretty prevalent in Central Javanese ornamentation, and is also one of the common batik motifs.

This motif is a representation of the kapok tree bud.

A. G. Maisey · 19th February 2020, 09:18 PM

The Malay meaning of "randu" was troubling me, so I looked it up in Wilkinson, published 1901, here is the dictionary entry:-

Randu. I. The action of the arm in stirring
up water or anything, when the arm is thrust
into water and worked round and round so as
to set the water in rapid motion. Randukan:
to work up or mix anything by working the
arm round and round in it; Sej, Mai., 122.

Mickey the Finn · 1st March 2020, 12:05 PM

I often take things for granted; the most recent pertinent instance may have been assuming that the majority of readers of this forum will automatically associate "angkup randu" with a specific design of mendak. I don't get out much, so I've never seen "angkup randu" used in any context except in reference to a mendak. Now that I think of it, this particular design I seem to recall as having been described by Mr. Maisey as something like "an ideal, single-use collapsible shock absorber" (words in quotation marks not a direct quote, but intended to convey my recollection of the meaning I think he intended at the time).
Kapok, I have read, is what the Imperial Japanese Naval and Army Air Services used as the filler in flotation vests/life jackets for their air crews. (I suspect it's been used for the same purpose more recently than that).
I think that I may go ahead and submit a post describing "My Initial Impressions of the General Atmosphere of the 'Keris Warung Kopi' and the Reason for the Delay Between My Registration and My First Post".
My experience with Google Translator has been more hit than miss. For Malay-English, I'd say it's worse than useless. Better to copy and paste any unknown Malay text and translate it as Sundanese, then Indonesian, then Javanese, and then you might have an idea of what it means. For English-Indonesian and the other way around: very, very good. Something like 98.28% of my Feisbuk friends are Indonesian, and none have ever voiced any suspicion that I'm Inggris bule, and not Indonesian. I straight up told one guy that I was using a translator to chat with him, and I had a hard time convincing him that I wasn't pulling his leg. Javanese-English is very hit-or-miss. A very big problem is G.T. doesn't have an understanding of different registers. And then there are terms like "Buta Nawasari/Naswari/Ngawasari"; I still don't know if it's Bengali or Hindi which I ought to translate from. Perhaps it's Balinized Bengali, and therein lies the problem. A while ago, some Balinese danganan name I tried to translate came up as something like "cousin does not know knee broken". The important thing is: for all translations, click the "reverse translation" feature to be sure it makes sense, and that words with more than one possible meaning are being translated into the meaning you intend. This can be tricky; sometimes you need to change the word order to correspond to the syntax of the target language. Sometimes the syntax of colloquial spoken English is incorrect syntax, which causes the translation to make no sense. Sometimes you'll need to use a synonym for the translation to come out right. Google Translator is my default tool to use for all the languages I need to translate from/to (Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, and Bahasa); only for Spanish do I sometimes need to use another as an adjunct.

David · 1st March 2020, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mickey the Finn

My experience with Google Translator has been more hit than miss. For Malay-English, I'd say it's worse than useless. Better to copy and paste any unknown Malay text and translate it as Sundanese, then Indonesian, then Javanese, and then you might have an idea of what it means. For English-Indonesian and the other way around: very, very good. Something like 98.28% of my Feisbuk friends are Indonesian, and none have ever voiced any suspicion that I'm Inggris bule, and not Indonesian. I straight up told one guy that I was using a translator to chat with him, and I had a hard time convincing him that I wasn't pulling his leg. Javanese-English is very hit-or-miss. A very big problem is G.T. doesn't have an understanding of different registers. And then there are terms like "Buta Nawasari/Naswari/Ngawasari"; I still don't know if it's Bengali or Hindi which I ought to translate from. Perhaps it's Balinized Bengali, and therein lies the problem. A while ago, some Balinese danganan name I tried to translate came up as something like "cousin does not know knee broken". The important thing is: for all translations, click the "reverse translation" feature to be sure it makes sense, and that words with more than one possible meaning are being translated into the meaning you intend. This can be tricky; sometimes you need to change the word order to correspond to the syntax of the target language. Sometimes the syntax of colloquial spoken English is incorrect syntax, which causes the translation to make no sense. Sometimes you'll need to use a synonym for the translation to come out right. Google Translator is my default tool to use for all the languages I need to translate from/to (Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, and Bahasa); only for Spanish do I sometimes need to use another as an adjunct.

Well Mickey, i am glad you are having some luck with Google Translator through what sounds like an extremely excruciating and convoluted method of multiple transition translations. Though i suspect that your Indonesian friends are either being very polite to you or it is THEY who are pulling your leg. I can't imagine that any native Indonesian speaker could be fooled by a Google translation into believing they are speaking to another native speaker though such translations.

A. G. Maisey · 1st March 2020, 08:59 PM

Interesting post Mickey. I guess I just don't have the necessary skills to use Google Translator (GT) effectively, because I seldom get any sense out of it.

I actually had cause to use it last week, I had it translate a passage written in BI into English, the reason I did this was because a good friend who lives in Bali --- he's been there about 11 years --- had used Google translator (GT) for the entire text of a Lombok story translated from I don't know what into BI.

Even though my friend has lived in Bali a long time, his BI is pretty rudimentary, I think because he is constantly required to use English for his work, so he uses GT for longer pieces of writing. Anyway, I read the BI text and it was perfectly clear, then I pulled a couple of paragraphs that we had been discussing from the text and ran them through GT. The result I got was a mess, but knowing what it was about because I'd read the original I could understand the GT job.

So yeah, GT makes a mess of syntax, and screws a few other things up, but for a mechanical service, its probably not too bad.

In respect of mendak, my thoughts on the possible function of a mendak as a "shock absorber" applies to all mendak, not just the angkup randu motif. All mendak are lightly made and do collapse under pressure, not like a metuk which solid metal.

The name "Buta Nawa Sari" is Balinese. Buta = evil spirit, but in fact, not all buta are invariably evil; buta inhabit graveyards and forest areas.

The word "Nawa" is commonly understood as "nine", but its other common meaning is as an indefinite length indicator --- you say something is "nawa" and in context that indicates that the something is long, but how long depends upon context.

The word "Sari" is again subject to context, but in all contexts it indicates the "essence" of something. In the use as an attribute of Nawa Sari, that essence is the pandan flower. The problem with the name "Buta Nawa Sari" is two fold, firstly he may not originally have been a buta, secondly the word "nawa" does have at least one other meaning and that other meaning could well solve part of the riddle. Right now the "nawa" problem is being worked on.

One thing appears to be certain, and that is that Nawa Sari is indigenous Balinese.

Kapok is a common product in Jawa, it is used to fill mattresses and pillows.

EDIT Mickey, what you said about GT on English to BI translation seems as if it is correct, I just ran several tests on it, nothing deliberately constructed to confuse, just simple, straight forward statements and what GT produced was better than 90% OK.

A. G. Maisey · 1st March 2020, 10:34 PM

So, I thought to myself:-

"what are some of usual misunderstandings that occur between native English speakers and native BI speakers?"

I told GT that:-

"I am English and that rujak is far too hot for me, and the gado-gado is no better"

and what GT translated that as was:-

"Saya orang Inggris dan rujak itu terlalu panas untuk saya, dan gado-gado tidak lebih baik"

which is acceptably OK, but not what anybody who speaks Indonesian would have either understood, or said --- particularly if the Englishman was sitting at the same table and drinking copious quantities of water with his eyes and nose running and his throat & belly on fire.

Of course, it is possible to lead GT down an incorrect path by pretending that it is a real live person, but no matter how much it might like to be, it cannot ever eat rujak or gado-gado.

1st March 2020, 12:05 PM	#4
Mickey the Finn Member Join Date: Dec 2017 Posts: 90	Re: Kapok, Google Translator, "angkup randu", et al. I often take things for granted; the most recent pertinent instance may have been assuming that the majority of readers of this forum will automatically associate "angkup randu" with a specific design of mendak. I don't get out much, so I've never seen "angkup randu" used in any context except in reference to a mendak. Now that I think of it, this particular design I seem to recall as having been described by Mr. Maisey as something like "an ideal, single-use collapsible shock absorber" (words in quotation marks not a direct quote, but intended to convey my recollection of the meaning I think he intended at the time). Kapok, I have read, is what the Imperial Japanese Naval and Army Air Services used as the filler in flotation vests/life jackets for their air crews. (I suspect it's been used for the same purpose more recently than that). I think that I may go ahead and submit a post describing "My Initial Impressions of the General Atmosphere of the 'Keris Warung Kopi' and the Reason for the Delay Between My Registration and My First Post". My experience with Google Translator has been more hit than miss. For Malay-English, I'd say it's worse than useless. Better to copy and paste any unknown Malay text and translate it as Sundanese, then Indonesian, then Javanese, and then you might have an idea of what it means. For English-Indonesian and the other way around: very, very good. Something like 98.28% of my Feisbuk friends are Indonesian, and none have ever voiced any suspicion that I'm Inggris bule, and not Indonesian. I straight up told one guy that I was using a translator to chat with him, and I had a hard time convincing him that I wasn't pulling his leg. Javanese-English is very hit-or-miss. A very big problem is G.T. doesn't have an understanding of different registers. And then there are terms like "Buta Nawasari/Naswari/Ngawasari"; I still don't know if it's Bengali or Hindi which I ought to translate from. Perhaps it's Balinized Bengali, and therein lies the problem. A while ago, some Balinese danganan name I tried to translate came up as something like "cousin does not know knee broken". The important thing is: for all translations, click the "reverse translation" feature to be sure it makes sense, and that words with more than one possible meaning are being translated into the meaning you intend. This can be tricky; sometimes you need to change the word order to correspond to the syntax of the target language. Sometimes the syntax of colloquial spoken English is incorrect syntax, which causes the translation to make no sense. Sometimes you'll need to use a synonym for the translation to come out right. Google Translator is my default tool to use for all the languages I need to translate from/to (Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, and Bahasa); only for Spanish do I sometimes need to use another as an adjunct.

1st March 2020, 08:59 PM	#6
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,019	Interesting post Mickey. I guess I just don't have the necessary skills to use Google Translator (GT) effectively, because I seldom get any sense out of it. I actually had cause to use it last week, I had it translate a passage written in BI into English, the reason I did this was because a good friend who lives in Bali --- he's been there about 11 years --- had used Google translator (GT) for the entire text of a Lombok story translated from I don't know what into BI. Even though my friend has lived in Bali a long time, his BI is pretty rudimentary, I think because he is constantly required to use English for his work, so he uses GT for longer pieces of writing. Anyway, I read the BI text and it was perfectly clear, then I pulled a couple of paragraphs that we had been discussing from the text and ran them through GT. The result I got was a mess, but knowing what it was about because I'd read the original I could understand the GT job. So yeah, GT makes a mess of syntax, and screws a few other things up, but for a mechanical service, its probably not too bad. In respect of mendak, my thoughts on the possible function of a mendak as a "shock absorber" applies to all mendak, not just the angkup randu motif. All mendak are lightly made and do collapse under pressure, not like a metuk which solid metal. The name "Buta Nawa Sari" is Balinese. Buta = evil spirit, but in fact, not all buta are invariably evil; buta inhabit graveyards and forest areas. The word "Nawa" is commonly understood as "nine", but its other common meaning is as an indefinite length indicator --- you say something is "nawa" and in context that indicates that the something is long, but how long depends upon context. The word "Sari" is again subject to context, but in all contexts it indicates the "essence" of something. In the use as an attribute of Nawa Sari, that essence is the pandan flower. The problem with the name "Buta Nawa Sari" is two fold, firstly he may not originally have been a buta, secondly the word "nawa" does have at least one other meaning and that other meaning could well solve part of the riddle. Right now the "nawa" problem is being worked on. One thing appears to be certain, and that is that Nawa Sari is indigenous Balinese. Kapok is a common product in Jawa, it is used to fill mattresses and pillows. EDIT Mickey, what you said about GT on English to BI translation seems as if it is correct, I just ran several tests on it, nothing deliberately constructed to confuse, just simple, straight forward statements and what GT produced was better than 90% OK. Last edited by A. G. Maisey; 1st March 2020 at 09:10 PM.

19th February 2020, 08:56 PM	#2
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,019	I think most keris people would know this,its pretty basic knowledge, but maybe some of the new boys might not, so it is worth mentioning I guess. There is a type of Solo mendak that is named "angkup randu" because it carries the angkup randu motif, which is pretty prevalent in Central Javanese ornamentation, and is also one of the common batik motifs. This motif is a representation of the kapok tree bud.

19th February 2020, 09:18 PM	#3
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,019	The Malay meaning of "randu" was troubling me, so I looked it up in Wilkinson, published 1901, here is the dictionary entry:- Randu. I. The action of the arm in stirring up water or anything, when the arm is thrust into water and worked round and round so as to set the water in rapid motion. Randukan: to work up or mix anything by working the arm round and round in it; Sej, Mai., 122.

1st March 2020, 10:34 PM	#7
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,019	So, I thought to myself:- "what are some of usual misunderstandings that occur between native English speakers and native BI speakers?" I told GT that:- "I am English and that rujak is far too hot for me, and the gado-gado is no better" and what GT translated that as was:- "Saya orang Inggris dan rujak itu terlalu panas untuk saya, dan gado-gado tidak lebih baik" which is acceptably OK, but not what anybody who speaks Indonesian would have either understood, or said --- particularly if the Englishman was sitting at the same table and drinking copious quantities of water with his eyes and nose running and his throat & belly on fire. Of course, it is possible to lead GT down an incorrect path by pretending that it is a real live person, but no matter how much it might like to be, it cannot ever eat rujak or gado-gado.