After Facebook translated to Bahasa Malaysia few weeks back, it is now Paypal’s turn to announce the same. This round, besides Bahasa Indonesia , it also translates to Thai and Traditional Chinese (for Taiwan) but not Bahasa Malaysia.

I spotted Malaysia flag on the page, but to my disappointment, this is not Bahasa Malaysia, but Bahasa Indonesia.

Would you understand what this sentence means at a glance? Well, I’ve to scroll down further before I know that fitur = feature @ ciri-ciri in Bahasa Malaysia. Not too bothering though.

It’s now common that, for any services/applications translated to Bahasa Malaysia, it will sound like Bahasa Indonesia. I’m not against that, it’s just that sometimes it is misleading non-Bahasa Malaysia spoken population, to believe that, Bahasa Indonesia & Bahasa Malaysia is exactly the same, even though they’re literally different.

Applaud the effort, but perhaps Paypal should be aware of the difference between Bahasa Indonesia & Bahasa Malaysia. Nonetheless, Bahasa Malaysia-spoken population can still understand sentences in Bahasa Indonesia and this is useful in that sense.

Indonesia has obviously larger population, which means larger internet users (considering Jakarta itself has over 22 millions population). This might be taken into consideration when Paypal decided to go with Bahasa Indonesia.

Besides, Malaysia is among the English-fluent country in this region. Personally, I’m more comfortable with English when I browse the net. It’s just sound weird when it’s translated.