Forge, Nurture, Cultivate

Forge, nurture, cultivate. "We should never allow any element to undermine the harmony which we have established and nurtured for so long".

Lampu Terpasang Sejak Siang

How do you translate "Beliau menelefon polis apabila mendapati lampu di rumah jirannya terpasang sejak siang"?

"He called the police upon noticing the light in his neighbour's house is switched on since...?"

How Do You Translate "Pintu Air"?

Recently, while I was translating a Malay copy, I came across a noun, "pintu air". If you translate it literally you'd get "water door".

Frankly, I've never heard of the word before. At first I thought the phrase referred to areas somewhere near the rivermouth but it didn't make sense. Why would you call a rivermouth "pintu air" when you already have the word rivermouth to describe what you meant.

Anyway, I asked my Malay colleague about the meaning of pintu air and was told that it had something to do with irrigation. "It's a structure you build across the irrigation canal so that you can slow the flow of water or stop it altogether," he said.

In the end I settled for "water outlet in irrigation system". Alas, the correct word was "sluice" (see picture)

Infamous

All this while -- and all this while I thought this should be written as "all these while" -- I thought the word "infamous" was a negative variation of the word "famous".

I just knew it came from the root word "infamy" -- (n.) notoriety, extreme ill-repute.

Palette Of The Mouth

Palette is the new word I learn today. I came across the word while reading The Star newspaper about a girl clawed by a leopard at the Zoo Negara in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

"There are scratches on her neck and back but we later realised that there was a cut in the palette of her mouth too," The Star quoted the mother as saying.

The girl is in stable condition. By the way, the word palette also has several other meanings.

[Picture courtesy of Wikipedia]

Implacable, Impudent, Infamy

Implacable, impudent, infamy... these are among the 100 words, according to World-English, you should know to impress the examiner.

Here are the 100 English words you should know if you want to impress the examiner. See for yourself if you know the meaning of all of it.

Who Needs Information?

Ever heard of Jambongan Island? It’s a small island, twice the size of Singapore, located north-east of Sabah, Malaysia — an island where you can still see mousedeer running around in nearby bushes. Wild boars are in great numbers, so are many types of birds and other wildlifes.

Late last year my brother, who is a teacher at a primary school there, told me that the island now able to connect to the cyberspace, using a VSAT (very small aperture terminal) facility. I said, that’s good.

I encourage him to blog about the island and the life of the people there and bring out the story of Jambongan to the outside world.

He said he’ll do so. Recently though, he told me, there was a bit of electricity problems there. The solar power unit was not functioning, he said, while the generator set often runs out of fuel. He said he had lost interest in starting a blog because of the lack of connectivity. I know what he meant. I guess, you too, know how it is, not being able to connect to the Internet as and when you feel like it.

It’s a different story in another part of Southeast Asia.

Take Singapore, for example. It’s among the most wired nations in the world. In the next few years, the island state also embarking on an island-wide wireless, very high speed, broadband connectivity, thus galloping ahead of its neighbours into the age of digital.

So… yeah, digital divide is very real. Hmm… I thought I heard Roger Waters singing Who Needs Information as I blog this.