Mastodon!

Tonight I am celebrating: I’m lounging in my pilates clothes, music turned up, mining all the red and green jelly bits from a bag of dried fruit and reading “Would you wear that?” on People.com. After two week of working to piece together a translation of the proposed election law accurate enough to base my comments on, an excellent translation from the UN Development Programme has landed at the office.

Karlito brought it in, and I felt like he had just dragged home a still-steaming mastodon. The UN has a policy against disseminating unofficial translations of legal documents, which really is just a peevish attempt to shake off free riders. Everyone knows that the UN has the translation, but NGOs generally have to grovel and work connections raw to squeak out a copy.

Getting a decent translation of an important law is therefore hard for two reasons: language and territoriality.

First, language. Timor Leste has a population of roughly one million people. These one million people speak at least one of the seven major Timorese languages, as well Indonesian, which was taught in schools until 1999. When Timor Leste became independent in 2002, it had to choose an official language. English was out because of tensions with Australia, Indonesian – a practical choice – was ruled out because of history. Tetum, the most widely spoken local language, lacked the technical vocabulary to do the legal heavy lifting. That left Portuguese, the language of pre-1975 colonial times.*

So when a law is released in Timor Leste it is in Portuguese. The ideal translator, in this case, would be a native English speaker with fluent Portuguese and legal experience. Not easy to find, and not cheap. I was warned of prices as high as .65 Euro per word (.20 Euro would be more accurate, though hardly a give-away).

The second problem, territoriality, is an old story – most people have heard about NGO turf-wars and clucked at the loss of focus on the organizations’ altruistic missions.

In the next two weeks Parliament will be hearing testimony on the proposed laws from political parties, the Catholic Church, and local and international NGOs. While a coordinated and forceful message would be ideal, each organization is holding its cards close to the vest.

This posture contrasts with the tremendous help that I have received from peers – whether it be workout clothes or the names of a translator.

I like living in East Timor – the language, saying good morning to all the people at the office, the beach on weekends, ex pats unceasingly arguing politics and development, piglets everywhere, and turning onto my street after a long walk.


* A parallel process unfolded concerning currency. East Timor is too poor and small to create its own currency. According to a UN old-timer, the Portuguese government tried to unload a whole shipping container of dead Portuguese currency before the decision was made to adopt the US dollar. Without a mint, US dollars in East Timor are invariably filthy and limp. According to a friend, much of the currency here is also counterfeit.