This page provides online resources
to assist users in carrying out web-based research on Indonesia and East Timor. Suggestions for additional links are always
welcome!
Edited by Elizabeth Coville (ecoville@gmail.com)
What's Up on the Web:
A fortnightly update on
items of special interest to researchers on Indonesia and East Timor and
accessible through links on this page.
# 7 - Easy bilingualism
I love the way the web
lets me see the same piece of text in two (or more) languages side by side. I
discover this when trying to follow a news story for which I lack the
specialized vocabulary in Indonesian. If I can see simultaneously both the
familiar English and also the full Indonesian, some of which is unfamiliar to
me, then my understanding of the story is sharpened. Anyway it is a lot less
cumbersome than digging into dictionaries or scanning glossaries.
Needless to say, both
Voice of America and the
BBC do this. Actually, the two
versions aren't literally side by side, and you have to click around a bit to
find them, but it's still easy. For instance. here are two stories on the
tsunami that struck southwestern Java this week:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5186844.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/indonesian/news/story/2006/07/060717_quakejakarta.shtml
Some NGOs post their
reports in both English and Indonesian and a lot of other languages as well.
For instance, the
International
Crisis Group makes it very convenient to read what they write in both
languages. Look at the top of the homepage for languages. So does
Human Rights Watch. Here
you'll need to go to Other Languages and then Additional Languages to find
Indonesian.
The pedagogical potential
of these bilingual sites must be apparent to educators. For instance, BBC has
something called
Membaca Berita dalam 2 Bahasa. And, of course, the
SEAsite has lots of English and
Indonesian text that can be viewed side by side.
Posted on July 18, 2006