18 Jul /16

Indonesian language – a comfortable localisation challenge

Indonesian localisation
Indonesian localisation – Indonesian can be a comfortable language, but can also turn into a real localisation challenge for your business – EVS Translations

Indonesian language is spoken by nearly a quarter of a billion people. Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia, as the name suggests, is the official language of Indonesia, while the term Malay Indonesian is often used to refer to the standardised language of Indonesia along with the Malay language of Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore.

Typically, with any language, Indonesian language can be as complex and difficult as the user wants to make it.

Indonesian can be a comfortable language…

Along with the comfortable Latin script and subject-verb-object word order, Indonesian has the benefit of not having genders, verb tenses, plurals and conjugations, which always seem to provide headaches and infinite opportunities for involuntary insults and business pitfalls in many other languages.

or a real localisation challenge

Conversely, Indonesian is an agglutinative language, meaning that new words are created by adding prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes to old words. Additionally slightly different affixes may have very different meanings which, until your business becomes familiar with it, can turn the Indonesian vocabulary into a real localisation challenge.

Two open-mid vowels add up to the six vowels in Indonesian.
The language contains a serious range of different pronouns, where personal pronouns are a subset of nouns but not a separate part of speech.
Verbs are not marked for tense, as time adverbs do the job; however, a complex system of verb affixes renders nuances of meaning and denotes voice and moods.

The Malay Indonesian market can open up a wealth of opportunities for your business and while the official local language might seem fairly comfortable, it can get quite complex and challenging. Our teams of Indonesian translators and Indonesian interpreters, tailored to answer your specific Indonesian localisation needs, offer high-quality certified Indonesian language services in line with international standards, government regulations and corporate guidelines.