From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
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The Text
The manuscript of From Jail to Jail presented many difficulties, not the least of which was the large number of typographical errors, characteristic of Indonesian publications during the 1940s and early 1950s.14 While it might be expected that Volume III in stencil form would have a particularly high number of errors, this holds true for Volume II also, although, appearing in printed form, it clearly did not benefit from the same standard of proofreading as Volume I. Overall, I have identified over four hundred typographical errors, an average of one per 7.36 translated pages in Volume I, one per 1.88 pages in Volume II, and one per 1.57 pages in Volume III. These errors fall into a number of different categories. Some 4.3 percent related specifically to the printing process, as opposed to typing or copying errors. These in many cases proved the most obvious errors, but were among the hardest to correct. Lines of type, and occasionally whole paragraphs, were dropped from the text or transposed. In all these cases, I have indicated in footnotes the error and, where possible, have attempted to rearrange the text into a meaningful form. As mentioned above, I have had the benefit of alternative texts with which to compare my copy-text and have indicated where these have been used to resolve difficulties.
Not unexpectedly, foreign words and names account for a high percentage of the errors (18.2 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively). While some of these may be Tan Malaka’s, a large number reflect absolute unfamiliarity with the language or name being used, making it extremely likely that the copyist or typographer made the mistake. The fact that many foreign words are spelled correctly in one place and incorrectly in another strengthens this hypothesis.
Punctuation errors abound throughout the text, accounting for 12.3 percent of total errors. Almost invariably these involve something as insignificant to understanding as a full stop substituted for a comma, a sentence commencing with a lower-case letter, or quotation marks omitted from conversation. I rarely found it necessary to draw attention to these errors in a note.
The remaining typographical errors fall into the categories of addition (8.7 percent), omission (17.7 percent), substitution (23 percent) and transposition (6.8 percent) of letters, syllables, or entire words. Many of these were obvious and easily corrected (for example, menudjud = menudju; dn = dan; atau = atas; tenutlah = tentulah) and I have not indicated their occurrence in a note. Where the error gave rise to substantial uncertainty of meaning in the text, I have given in a note either a full explanation of the reconstruction or simply the word as it appears in the manuscript and as I have reconstructed it (for example, disetudjui = ditudjui). These errors are the standard types encountered in text editing and can have occurred either in the printing process or at any stage in the copying of the manuscript or even in Tan Malaka’s original manuscript itself.15
Handling all these textual errors and inconsistencies necessitated the construction of a detailed set of guidelines and policies. While at times I was tempted to document every error in the manuscript, and did in fact prepare footnotes to this effect, finally I decided to pull back from this course and document only those errors substantial enough to involve reconstruction and even guesswork on my part. This decision was influenced partly by the essay of Robert Halsbrand “Editing the Letters of Letter-Writers” in which he says,
I believe, perhaps naively, that the exact reproduction of a manuscript is impossible. Even if we used a photoprocess, we should then begin to worry about the color of the ink, the quality of the paper, the manner of folding the sheet, and so on. When we decide to reproduce it by means of typography, we have made a great concession; and once having made it we need not be stingy as to its extent. No reader of the book will be fooled into thinking he has a manuscript in his hand.16
How much more unattainable is the goal of an “exact reproduction of a manuscript” when one is dealing with a translation. Footnotes documenting every single typographical error could perhaps stand in a parallel text, but they seem quite out of place in presenting the manuscript in translation.
A second major challenge in the manuscript was that of language.17 Tan Malaka’s Indonesian often reflects more the style used in the 1920s, when he left Indonesia on his long exile, than that predominant in the revolutionary period. In a language evolving as quickly as modern Indonesian, this means that considerable differences exist between Tan Malaka’s style and that of the period in which he wrote the book and, even more so, that of present-day Indonesian. In large part these difficulties could be overcome by reference to contemporary dictionaries and native speakers of Indonesian. The differences from modern Indonesian are principally those of variant spellings (bergumandang for berkumandang), the relative lack of differentiation between various affixes (memindjam kepada for memindjamkan kepada), or consonant changes (mempastikan for memastikan).18
In addition to these archaic and irregular forms of Indonesian, From Jail to Jail presents problems created by the frequent appearance of foreign words and expressions from a wide variety of languages. Dutch, English, German, French, Latin, Minangkabau, Chinese, and Japanese terms appear throughout the text. With the exception of Dutch, I have retained all Tan Malaka’s foreign vocabulary, in most cases giving the English translation in brackets and where necessary a footnote explanation. This policy was adopted in order to retain the cosmopolitan flavor that pervades From Jail to Jail; eradication of these expressions would, I believe, have detracted considerably from the text. In particular, I considered it important to preserve Tan Malaka’s own English expression, with all its peculiarities, such as his reference to the saying “It’s a long way to the prairie.” To differentiate Tan Malaka’s English from my translation, his English words appear in italics. I have added footnotes only where necessary for an understanding of his intent. I have retained the spelling used in these English expressions, since it is often unclear whether any errors were Tan Malaka’s or the printer’s. On a few occasions I have pluralized the word in order to make it fit the context. As to Tan Malaka’s use of Dutch, I decided to translate the foreign words without annotation. Tan Malaka would have assumed some knowledge of Dutch on the part of the majority of his readers. Illiteracy was high in Indonesia in the 1940s. Those people educated sufficiently to read such a book would have had enough knowledge of Dutch to understand the terms he used. Written and spoken Indonesian of that period frequently was punctuated with Dutch terminology; a decision to preserve Tan Malaka’s Dutch would, I believe, have introduced a barrier to understanding the text that was not encountered by the majority of its contemporary readers.19 Occasional exception has been made to this policy; for instance, a few Dutch proverbs and sayings have been retained with English translation in parentheses, as have a few terms, in particular inlander (native), the all-pervasive discriminatory epithet of colonial society, always used to separate and differentiate, hence better left in the foreign tongue in which it was uttered.
Some Indonesian words remain in the translation, principally where they have no direct English equivalent (such as Tan Malaka’s term murba) or where they were used in the revolutionary period with particular connotation and significance (such as pemuda, perjuangan, merdeka). In all such cases I have explained the term in a footnote on its first occurrence and have included it in the glossary, where other foreign words used more than once are also to be found. Proper names, principally those of organizations and parties, remain in their original language (mainly Indonesian), as do titles of publications referred to in the text and in footnotes. Where possible I have not retranslated Tan Malaka’s quotations of foreign-language material, but have sought the original or a published English-language translation for inclusion.
Tan Malaka’s text contains much that is strange to an English reader, leaning towards the Germanic style with frequent capitalization, particularly for abstract nouns, and the inclusion of a series of exclamation marks, question marks, and full stops. I have not included these in the English translation, where they would look quite out of place. I have reserved the use of square brackets for the rare occasions where I have felt constrained to introduce some interpolation to make the text meaningful. Parentheses have been used for Tan Malaka’s own interpolations in other quotations, for his parenthetical remarks in the text itself, and for translations of foreign terms, as explained above. Many of the copy-text’s