JP/Anissa S. Febrina

For most of us, what he does seems irrelevant. Why should we translate the word “email” into Indonesian when the world seems to understand perfectly well when we use it?

But for Ivan Lanin, it is a simple cause worth fighting for, as he wants Indonesians to still be able to appreciate their own language in an era when most languages are swarmed with new English technology-related terms.

Thus, in his everyday life, Ivan replaces “email” with surel (an acronym derived from surat elektronik or electronic mail), uses daring (dalam jaringan) instead of “online” while trying as hard as he can not to mix words from his native language and English ones.

“Unlike concise English words, the Indonesian translation is often long. That’s why acronyms like surel, daring and luring [off-line] are more suitable,” he said.

Nicknamed the language evangelist, Lanin, who works as a linguist-cum-editor for Google, is armed with a Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (large Indonesian dictionary) as his bible and faith in his mother tongue.

“People tend to take their own language for granted,” the 35-year-old said.

“When we find a new English word we don’t understand, we’d quickly open a dictionary. But, when we find an Indonesian word that we’ve never heard of, we’d dismiss it by saying that such word doesn’t exist,” he pointed out.

“Have you ever heard the word mendaras [to recite], for example?”

Rather than a knowledge test, his question is more of a gentle reminder we should remain inquisitive about a language we think we know everything about.

It was also meeting people who are proud of using their own language in the right context that inspired him to do what he does just for the sake of personal satisfaction.

“I remember in a Wiki gathering in Argentina, the head of the group there delivered all his speech in Spanish despite the fluent English I had noticed from previous emails,” Lanin pointed out.

“He’s using the most proper language to address his mostly Spanish-speaking audience. It’s something that we rarely see here.”

But Lanin does not hold any qualifications in Indonesian, nor he is a professional writer or translator.

“I’m just interested in understanding more about formal Indonesian and how to use it properly,” says the man who works as a chief technical officer for his risk-management joint-company by day.

It all started with his increasing interest in contributing articles and entries for Wikipedia Indonesia in 2006.

“We have to use formal Indonesian when writing entries in the free online encyclopedia. It was then I realized mine was very limited,” Lanin said, adding that he then started opening the Indonesian dictionary more often and looking for online forums where he could learn from experts.

“I was just like anyone else who had to use English a lot for work.

Old friends and relatives were surprised I was making more and more efforts to use the correct Indonesian,” the man who graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology’s Chemical Engineering department recalled.

Several months later, in July 2007, Lanin’s thirst for knowledge in the field led him to join the Bahtera mailing list, an online forum for more than 2,000 translators and Indonesian enthusiasts.

From being a newbie in the online forum, Lanin slowly built his reputation as one of the most active advocates of the proper use of Indonesian with his blogs, Facebook status and even Twitter tweets.

Err, he’d rather use the word kicauan instead of tweets.

His most significant contribution is perhaps the Indonesian reference website Kateglo — an acronym for kamus (dictionary), tesaurus (thesaurus) and glosarium (glossary) — that he built in just three days after a discussion with Rommy Hardianto, an Indonesian translator working for Firefox.

“It’s basically a one-stop shop for cross-referencing, because we often find a glossary containing words we’ve never heard of,” the former Wikimedia Indonesia executive director said.

It was the word “evergreen” translated into malar hijau, that led him to spend one weekend last June building the Kateglo website.

“I know hijau [green], but what does malar mean? I later found out it means ever. It’s this kind of cross-referencing between a glossary and dictionary I want to accommodate in the website,” he said.

Along with his friends at Bahtera, Lanin plans to publish the content of Kateglo as a supplement to the more commonly used dictionary KBBI, existing English-Indonesian glossaries and Indonesian thesaurus.

“We want to proof that despite having a free online service through the website, the print version can still sell,” he said.

For the time being, while waiting for the project to take off, Lanin takes interest in observing the responses his friends give him when he introduces a rarely-used word in Indonesian.

“They now respond with ‘hmm, where did you bump into that word’ or ‘where can I look it up’ instead of dismissing its existence,” he said anecdotally.

“I realized it takes time and we just can’t force people to use Indonesian correctly in our everyday life when in fact we work and live in a world where languages increasingly borrow words from each other.”

But Lanin claims he is no linguist.

“I’m just an enthusiast who still uses street Indonesian when chatting with friends, and mixes English words into the conversation when I can’t find the right translation…” he wrote on his blog.

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