The problem of the Indonesian and Malaysian free kick

Team Indonesia playing against Team Ireland at the 2013 Harmony Cup. Photo: Nasya Bahfen

There's a great multi-lingual resource on the AFL website that explains Australian Rules Football in several languages, called Welcome to Australian Football. I've been helping the AFL Multicultural Program translate that information into Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) and Bahasa Melayu (Malay).

The bulk of the original Malay translation had been done, and I just picked up a few typos. Because the two languages are essentially quite similar, I used the Malay translation as a base - with several marked differences. The one that caused me the most amusement was 'free kick'. The word 'percuma' in Malay means free but in Indonesian it means useless. Seriously. This became an issue because in Malay 'tendangan percuma' means free kick, but the exact same phrase in Indonesian means useless kick...In Indo it would be 'tendangan bebas' instead.

Contrary to popular belief, Indonesians and Malaysians aren't just nuts about football (soccer). The Indonesian community in Sydney and Melbourne, for example, have fielded a side in the annual Harmony Cup organised by Global Footy, three times in the last four years. Their team, called Indo Footy, have a website which you can visit here.