In order to win a war, one must know its enemy intimately. It goes in a phrase by Tsun Zu as, “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” During the periods of colonization, the Dutch...Show moreIn order to win a war, one must know its enemy intimately. It goes in a phrase by Tsun Zu as, “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” During the periods of colonization, the Dutch authority in Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) had reflected such ideas through its language policy. This policy established in 1818 and was intended to exercise the colonial authority by utilizing the language. The departement voor Inlandsche Zaken was established in order to connect the domains of the indigenous and colonial government in Dutch East Indies. By this, the agency was obliged to study the language and culture in the archipelago. During the first five years of the Inlandsche Zaken, it had showed remarkable achievements in the unification of local vernaculars and the standardization of Malay. In this paper, I will provide several analyses on translation of documents from the archives of the Inlandsche Zaken kept at the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia. By this, I will examine the differences between two similar documents-each documents contains Dutch texts and they are translated into Malay (Dutch texts in these two documents are similar but the Malay translations are different) produced by the Dutch colonial government. My central research question is, to what extent language was utilized as a tool of subordination towards the indigenous society in Dutch East Indies? In addition, I try to demonstrate that the Inlandsche Zaken had played a determinant role in bridging the two worlds in Dutch East Indies-namely the colonial government and the indigenous societies, and also had used such knowledge to exercise the colonial authority.Show less
