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Dikti scholarships lost in translation
Lost in translation: A screen-grab from the website of the Developing Countries Partnership (DCP) scholarship program, provided by the Education and Culture Ministryâs directorate general for higher Education, contains errors in grammar
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span class="inline inline-center">Lost in translation: A screen-grab from the website of the Developing Countries Partnership (DCP) scholarship program, provided by the Education and Culture Ministry's directorate general for higher Education, contains errors in grammar. Knb.dikti.go.id
The Education and Culture Ministry has been criticized for a number of language problems in its promotion of Indonesia's higher education institutions through its scholarship program, the Developing Countries Partnership (DCP), which is run by the ministry's Directorate-General of Higher Education (Dikti).
The scholarship website, knb.dikti.go.id, is a case in point. The first sentence that greets visitors to the website reads: 'Developing Countries Partnership program on Scholarship or better known as Beasiswa Kemitraan Negara Berkembang (KNB) designed to facilitate every passion of Developing Countries citizens to pursuing their dream through higher education.'
Nafisah Ratanti Wulandari, who obtained a scholarship from Europe's Erasmus Mundus for a Master's degree, said on Tuesday that her view of the Education Ministry's scholarship website was, 'Although the English is understandable, the style is unattractive and informal. There are too many informal idioms ['¦] it uses almost colloquial language.'
Marta Tintya Karunianingtyas, a Master's graduate who was given a Rector's Fellowship by the International Islamic University of Malaysia, concurred that the English used on the website was inelegant. 'The language issues should be fixed. [If I were the applicant] I would think twice. I would be afraid of miscommunication problems,' she added.
A number of grammatical errors also appear in the letters sent to the awardees of the DCP scholarship, which has been given to individuals from developing countries since 2002.
The letters, which can be downloaded from knb.dikti.go.id/index.php, contain more than 18 grammatical mistakes. Typographical errors, such as lack of spaces, also distract the reader.
For example, on the list of the Master's scholarship awardees in one of the letters, the scholar Galia Petkova is recorded as coming from 'Bulgary' instead of Bulgaria, while Ahmad SA Hamayel is said to come from 'Palestina' instead of Palestine. Sierra Leone is spelled 'Sierra Leonne', while Slovakia is 'Slovak'.
The ministry's letters also indicate that Ahmad took a Master's in Islamic 'Tought' instead of thought, while Duarte da Costa Barreto from Timor Leste is recorded as taking a Master's course in 'phylosophy' instead of philosophy.
In addition, all references to 'language' in the list are spelled as 'languange', while the word 'environmental' is rendered 'enviromental'.
When asked how such errors could occur, a Dikti deputy, R. Purwanto Subroto, said 'We will look into it.'
'We usually use a mechanism to monitor such errors,' he said, adding that the directorate-general did not have standard English names for program studies yet.
Purwanto further said that Dikti intended to discuss the matter in an upcoming coordination meeting.
Meanwhile, the ministry's inspector general, Haryono Umar, expressed astonishment at the errors. He said that the ministry had standard operational procedures in place for writing formal statements, supposedly ruling out the possibility of mistakes.
'The letters posted should have passed through a check and re-check procedure first,' Haryono said. 'There should be officials who sign and review them before they're sent.'
Laila Sifa, the scholarship program's coordinator at the directorate-general, said that the errors might be down to a lack of English expertise on the part of the directorate-general's staff.
'We also do not have special proofreading staff for such purposes,' Laila added.
Haryono said that to prevent such mistakes from reoccurring, the ministry would instruct every one of its officials to implement the standard operational procedures.
'The ministry's inspectorate-general will also evaluate the procedures to address the current situation,' Haryono added.
This year, the ministry has awarded DCP Master's degree scholarships to 117 awardees from 44 different countries. It has also awarded Bachelor's scholarships to four awardees from three different countries.
Last week, Dikti made headlines after delaying the payment of scholarship funds to Indonesian students studying at overseas universities.
A number of the students are facing economic hardship and are at risk of being dismissed from their universities for failing to pay their tuition.
Some of the scholarship grantees said that the late disbursements had been a recurring problem in recent years, but the current delay was the longest yet. (ask)
