Wednesday 20 January 2010

Kaskus makes Indonesian language too damn funny, and Naburo makes Naruto look like a masterpiece

If you’re Indonesian and you don’t have any idea about Kaskus, then, either you’re wasting too much time on Failbook or downloading too much not-so-legal stuff through bitTorrent. The online community which is sort of a second home for some Indonesian Internet users, has been known to be the source of all terms unbeknown to Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia: terms such as ‘agan’, ‘cendol’, ‘pertamax’ and God knows how much more there are are now gracing other bulletin boards and forums in Indonesia.

I stumbled upon a discussion in the Internet about an Indonesian comic called ‘Naburo’, which is a blatant rip-off of a Japanese manga ‘Naruto’. Copyright infringement? In Indonesia, such thing is a dime a dozen, although not as numerous as in China. What so special about Naburo is that, this book’s quality is abysmal. From artworks that are closer to a doodling than a finished drawing, cheesy and pointless conversation, facepalm-inducing storyline, and there are crapload of names originated from Naruto, unmodified. But I’ll just leave it at that. If you want to read some of the stuff, try here. Flooone has been very kind by scanlating the abomination into English.

All this talk about Naburo brought me to a well-known Naruto community forum called ‘Narutofan Forums’, and in one of the discussion thread, I found a link to Google translate that redirected me into Kaskus. All this time, I usually read Kaskus in native language, which is Indonesian. But a funny thing happened. Google translate changes the sentences from Indonesia to English, and guess what? I LOLed so hard my stomach struggled in pain.

Try it yourself and compare the two:
Original version
Translated version

some of my favorites:
maksa banget gan” translated to “forcing banget gan
naburo, ngasi nama baru yang beda dikit kek” translated to “naburo, the new name ngasi little different kek
gambarnya parah banget ......heran bisa dijual di gra*edia , ni komik sempet jadi bahan omongan di AMH trit naruto” translated to “really bad...... wonder can be sold in the gra * edia , Ni comic sempet be the talk of AMH trit naruto
wah ane jadi makin bangga ni” translated to “wah ane became increasingly proud ni

And many more. Did you see how readable they are, and how some sentences are actually how some Indonesian people mix-and-match English with Indonesian language? Of course, not every post is readable, but comparing the two and reading through all the pages is somewhat entertaining.
:D