Oh Yes, A Cultural Experience

As I ask questions and get some replies, I am realizing what it is like to be a foreigner in an academic community.  I will definitely have more empathy for those who come to my own country to study. I am gaining all the experiences they have there, right here myself. Empathy is a gift we gather from direct experiences of events that allows us to relate to others in the same experience in a different place. I am a  wealth of empathy in regard to being out of step in a place where others know the dance.  Everything is written on this university site in Bahasa Malayu.  Of course it is. That is normal. What is difficult for me, is that I have to translate everything before I know whether or not the messages are for me. Just like foreign students in my home country have to do.  No one made me do this. It was my choice. Now I get the experience I thought I wanted to have.

I found a student forum today. Maybe I shouldn't have. All in Malay, nothing in English. So each post requires a translation before I know whether I am interested or not.  Egad.  The general gist of these posts are similar to my own queries. When is the exam? When are the assignments posted?  How do I access past exams to see what is expected?  Unfortunately, like my own queries, these seem to be dead ends. I do not see answers to the questions.  Egad again.

This all brings me back to the original package that was supposed to be posted to me months ago. I still await that package. In it was to be my student id card, handbook, and probably a list of dates for materials, assignments, and exams.  Still I wait. Still I ask. Still nothing.

Following is a sample of what I translate there. As you view this, you too will see that either literal translations do not work, or the messages is meaningless in the first place.

what I see:

yg tahu mcm mana nak cri jdual. bgi sya link/url. tq

what it says in English:mcm know of any cri jdual want. BGI sya link / url. tq (does this mean anything to you?)