Wardah

: There are from my reading I found that there is confusion about your

hometown, the first one is from Beruas, the second one from Taiping, which one is true? Salleh : Beruas was an old state. Very old, as old as Malacca. In 15 century,

Beruas became part of Malacca, a colonial Malacca. So, Beruas included my place which is small village called Simpang Temerloh in Perak. If u says Beruas, generally is correct. But now Beruas is called Larut Matang. Taiping is bigger place. If I say I sit in Simpang Temerloh, not many people would now. So, just put Taiping and I dont have to answer too many questions. Atiqah : Sir, you started to write since you were a student in England. You said

that your writing were deeply influence by Elliot rather than RS Thomas. Is that true? Salleh : Perhaps not all influenced me, I think Elliot only, deeply influenced me

early, and it was in 1960s, 1963 1965, so I read a lot and Elliot was the greatest poet in English language. So before I was taught him I also read about him. I have a friend Omar Mohamad Nor, we were together, and he is really the one who led me to this things, to poetry, jazz, we travelled to Birmingham, only two of us. The others all want see Beatles and Cliff Richard. We were the one who were weirdos and want to see a good plays and read good writings. So, Elliot was earlier, but I dont like him now very much, because he is royalist, he believes in the power and authority of royalty which I dont. I am from Penang, and I dont have to. So, but, all then, I liked his intelligence. Very intelligence poet. Very productive. And he wrote many things. Then, he moved the US and stayed in NY for a long time until he died. RS Thomas I think was a sub conscious influence. RS Thomas is a welsh poet writing in English. He was priest minister and lived in Whales rituals kind of poor people had deals with poor people and poor farmers. So, life was difficult. And you notice that his poem was short and sharp, very profound. I like him very mush. So, it is a lot combination of many influences but rather examples that I took from. But, now I think, I go more along with RS Thomas influence is really there or not. There might be. But I influenced by Haiku from Japan. The student of Japanese literature in US and I went to Japan, and I also study Pantun. All this. Now, is more Asian than the early influence. But of course the people change from year to year, certain place and certain time, influences people in certain ways, you

move on. You just dont stay stuck in one place. So, I think the 3 influences are the strongest one. Others are not much. RS Thomas, I dont know what are critical

readings are. When I was in England, I bought a big book of selected poems of RS Thomas, but, since there are 700 poems that I sent to Anwar Ibrahim in jail. Yes, as a present. Why would I do that? He was my classmate but I was doing my master in English literature and also studied Malay Literature. So, I think Anwar didnt pass one year and he was retaking. So I took his class and I met him. And also I was classmate his brother. I knew him for many years. And he is a good man. He is hardworking man. As a poet, I can see people, and I can judge people better than politician judge people. In Islam, if you met somebody that a victim, u need to help and sympathize. I have my own politic. Of course yes, the weaknesses that we all do. But still, the idea is that, the idea I send the collected books of poems to Anwar Ibrahim. I send the collected book of Shakespeare to Hussein Ali in Kemunting. So, the little I can help people is my old friends. Not because they are no longer my friend. So, RS Thomas is past by economical I think u can poems here. It is a good idea to look up these people a few poems to see the influence and examples that I taken. Later on, mostly from the east. Because I studied the east. So, that is the answer of the question. Hasanah : Ive read one article in the internet that u always write poems sometimes

the word is difficult to understand. For example, archipelago. Salleh : There shouldnt be a difficult word. Archipelago means kepulauan.

Nowadays, the word is familiar and famous. In Malay literature, I would use more difficult word because Im a professional user of dictionaries. I think about 40 dictionaries. Mostly, Malay-English, Indo-English, Indo-German, Indo-French, MalayGerman, that combination. Because it is a wonderful language unless you know the language and you only use on the 2000 words of the whole vocabulary that we have, but over now, there are over million words in the Malay language. So, you all know very a few of them. So, in the English language but If u read a lot, these things will help you. Now, you see, it easy that before. We had to buy dictionaries. Now you can go to the online dictionaries, but online is not very good. But whatever, some the usual words cannot express the complicated meanings or very complicated emotion for example.

So, you go and find god dictionaries and they say, it will help u to understand human better and language better either English or Malay. Wardah : Ive heard that you started your career in English poet, but later change

your mind to National Language, so due to u can create creative imagination. Is it true about the statement? Salleh : First on, it is true that Id started in English. It must in around April or May

1963 in spring of Wolverhampton in that time. Three weeks after that, I started in Malay. So, in me there is always a true stream, one Malay, one English together. And sometimes, when I was a poet, the Malay streams almost die and dried up because I use more English. When I was in America, these streams also almost die. But then, in 1970s, I discovered that I feel guilty write in this language(English) that insults my old national language. They dont need poet in English. You got tons of them. But they need a good poet in Malay. I tried. And I have very different experience. Yes, there was in KB, so if you asking me about that, Osman Ali has the different experiences in me, but mostly, inside the country, Im the traveler and lived in many countries. And in many cultures somehow some of these cultures get the see in my old mind and come out poems with the certain slank and elements of the cultures. So I did stop out of the post colonial action. Now, the quarrel page, it shouldnt happen mostly non Malays but led by Malays and they hand it as Dato Mahathir who do not care about Malay language. It good language and you should to study English well. But, of course it is second of mother tongue, but it is a big language. I discover to great language. Not many people that discovered a great language. Because they dont read, they dont know that books written. But now, I do translate from Malay to English. So, I use the English as tools of promoting the Malaysian culture. But I not have written in English for a long time. Except a few poems that have been ask of me to write in the international journals and scholars for the books and for the rest I dont. Some people would ask me, dont you regret it. I did ever write in international names in English. But I can translate poems in English. My poems in English get published and it is the same thing. Wardah : I realized that most of your words in poems you focus more on culture.

Why you choose culture?

Salleh

: If you read about Anak Global, about Malay boy in the train. I guess Im

not more in the culture, means, I dont have exact identity. I dont sell Malaysia, literature is selling Malaysia. But, I guess if you write well, people want to read your poem and want to study your culture. You read Shakespeares, you want to know about England. So, its not direct. I like to travel a lot. I can tell you, this is another thing, that Si Tenggang would be not only I wrote Si Tenggang in 1973 after I returned from America. There was one man, who wants to bring back something to his village. But yo must to know, that it is Si Tenggang II. So, its not the Si Tenggang made by stone. This is theory that I had, Si Tenggang. Number one, the father left his son, somewhere around the world. There is one man overseas and this young man also experiences his fathers experience. He fell in love somebody with a girl and become rich. That why you must be clear, not many people know that. Is not the Si Tenggang. It about the Si Tenggangs son. That is important to know. Hasanah : What do you think about our Malaysian people and the outsiders from

various countries about our national language, Bahasa Melayu? Salleh : Malaysian? Im shameful because some of them cannot speak Malay

very well. Of course Malays can speak Malays see TV all the time. Example, they have been given a microphone but they cannot say things. Dialects are okay, but there is place that you dont have to use dialects. It has to be understood by all. Would you respect somebody in a country that doesnt have own national language? In Singapore, yes, because they have money and they aggressive but they dont have their own national language. Their national language is Malay. Believe it or not? But, they dont use it. They dont change it. India also their crazy. Most of the people who mix up the language are colonize people. People have been defeated. I noticed those who speak Rojak English around the world are Indians, Filipinos, and Malaysians. Because they think their language is not good enough, their culture is not good enough. The white man language is better. So, they embarrass to speak national language. But, English also is not good either. So, that is disgusting. You study but dont misunderstand. I study English. I write in English, but then, there is place for English, not everywhere. I dont know some after sometimes the institutions in Malaysia, many people would say

they dont want English. Malays yes. You see girls very nice dress in Arabs. But, all the language is come from English. Strange. I thought, Malay would be Muslim language too. Lots of Arabic word is in the language. But theyre not conscious that what had doing is colonial and not very Islamic in that matter. They use mother tongue. Our Malaysian people always use other language rather than national language. Ive watched a debate programme in Malay language in TV9 last night. They are from England, Holland and so on. Our Malaysian feel economic when speak English. Obviously shows that we are not being exposed to Malay language and should be spend more time in library. Our language is a great language. We have 1500 titles of manuscript alone, hand written. There are 22000-25000 manuscripts around the world. Because we dont care. I think, I am one of them who started request to have Pusat Dokumentasi Negara for Malay Language, and now we have 4000 manuscript and we already started about 40 and this is not bad. MH Salleh : Thats another problem. Theres not enough people to translate, its up to you. I was doing it. There was not many people to translate in literary books and so on. So they came to me. I was not a very good translator anyway. I just know 2 languages, there was nobody else. Tak ada rotan, akar pun berguna and I started to and finished with Hikayat Hang Tuah, which is about 800 pages but you can do it. Everybody starts not knowing much but sometimes you can. So in a sense of purpose, not just teaching for your salary but more than that. So, this is a big problem, translation in Malaysia, not enough people, into Malay is bad, into English is bad too. We have to change these things.

Hasanah : Even sometimes when we read books, like when they translate into Bahasa Melayu, and then become more confusing because the translation...

MH Salleh: ...because they dont know how to translate(laughs) I was the first founder preston of the Persatuan Penterjemahan. We have all these problems but slowly were getting better. It used to be worse. Books here translated in dewan bahasa in the 70s,

nobody could understand because the translation was so bad and then these people were not experts. To translate a certain book for example, you must be an expert in that field. If its chemistry, then chemists should translate them. The problem with our people is that, chemists dont translate. So perhaps pair 2 people together. Perhaps too many problems in translation but it is getting a little better with the Institut Terjemahan Negara. Its much more work being done and also quite well organised.

Wardah : Currently, the government has imported foreign teachers to our country to teach our students. So, will it reflect that our teachers are not competent enough to teach English?

MH Salleh : As I was saying just now, 13 years of teaching English, how many days a week?

Wardah : 7 days

MH Salleh : 7 days a week, yeah, somethings very wrong. 5 days a week. In those days they used to bring Americans, Peace Core, they call it under Peace Core Program, you give them 6 months of Malay, sometimes in Hawaii, some other places, when they come here they teach in Malay. 6 months. And now students are going France, to Germany, theyre given special courses, they go, and they carry on from there. How come 13 years of English... very very wrong somewhere. In Holland, my students in Holland they speak good English. They also speak good French and German. The Malays, they, well, the Malays sometimes, we dont handle even our National Language well. English, well, a great problem, arabic very few, so we are not even helping ourselves know more languages. You should know more languages in the world. In 20 years time, 30 years time, English will be number 3 in the world. Mandarin, then

Spanish and then English. True, there are many things in the English language and after that, the fourth language would be Malay, Hindi and Arabic, same level. So, we need to know these languages but I dont know what happens in schools. I think we study grammar. Students dont like grammar. Up to the university, you could not handle conjugation, plural.

Iqram : So sir, the phenomenon today is that instead of the language, the Malaysians now, they are absorbing the culture of the Westerners instead of the language itself. So, they left out the language out of the picture and they take the clothing, the thinking but they dont take the language. So, will that be a problem for our society or...?

MH Salleh : What do you think first? Nobody can escape of being young and being young you follow... this is the design, although not in wool of the autumn and winter jacket of the temperate people. So it has come down into a cotton shirt with the same design. So you might not know but that is what it is. So, your jeans for example, and some jeans. Are you wearing Levis?

Eirfaan : No, these are Edwins.

MH Salleh : Edwins, I dont know that Malachai... Levis is Jewish, most people dont know. Most of our computer are made by Jews, Intel especially but if you have a sense of things, you can live your life out. You must fight. If you think that too much influence, you must fight but I think personally I must not only fight the western, I must fight the arabs too. We have our own ways. Some people want to be too arab. They think being a muslim is being arab. So, the dress of the arab and so on, are taken over. And I dont think any part of the Quran or Hadith says that you should become an Arab. You should become a good muslim. You cover yourself, you know, in those days, you dont cover

this, selendang only, thats also covering and I dont know, you cannot survive in the non air-conditioned world, wearing like this. So, it is kind of difficult to live in the tropics, so everyone runs into the air-conditioned rooms. You become a person of interiors. In those days, our parents, they work under the house or in the house, in the paddy field, or in the rubber plantation, they dont need all these things. But now, we all run into the air con, nobody can stand the heat outside. So, something is wrong. The white men dont do that. They dont like air conditions, they get sick. If they come here, the stupid hotels, they reduce the temperature to 20 degrees, they get sick, because they are not used to the air conditioning because natural cold is different from air conditioning cold and then the dust and so on. But this is not English literature. Your question is that, be a proud Malaysian, it is good to be, it is not a bad country. Although too many thieves from the very top to the very bottom. Many thieves. I wrote a poem, Negara Pencuri, curi tulang, curi tanah, curi telefon, curi komputer, semua dia curi. If you know the language, in the language is culture. So if you take out the Malay language, then the Malay culture is gone or the Malaysian culture is gone. The Malay language doesnt contain only Malay culture, there this culture, Peranakan, also in the Malay language. Now, if a Kadazan marries an Iban, the children speak Malay, or they themselves when they relate to each other, they speak the national language. It;s bigger than just the malays and the malays are many types also. So, the minangkabau brings some elements of minagkabau in Malay. English too. Can you guess how many malay words are in the English language, say, in the 1900, how many words of the malay did the English took. Its 100 but still, English takes a lot from Germany. Its a anglo saxon language. Germanic language. Then you added the Norwegian languages because the Vikings came and took over and then the French took over the English language became more sophisticated when they took the French language. Many of the difficult words in English are from france. And they took malay, they took Arabic, they took Chinese, African too some, so, they accused us for taking words from other countries, so do they. And malay became the lingua franca. There are at least 40 dialects of malay in the whole of the malay archipelago. Theres a timur kupang malay for people in timur timur and timur. So, they used that, they need that language to communicate with each other because they cant speak each others language. There is 1 in manado, so all the

tribes and groups in manado and gunung talo, they speak the melayu manado. Then you go to makasa, still, makasa malay. Theres betawi malay, and there is a riau malay in the old lingua franca and of course medan now, they have to use the malay or the Indonesian language. So, and it is very rich. We cant speak their language, Indonesians, whose mother tongue are not malay speak it better than us. But then the English dont speak English very well either. You go to cogney, you go to London and so on, the pronunciation, the limited words, ok, uh, other questions.

Atiqah: English

What are the biggest challenges of Malaysians writers who write in

MH Salleh:

English is a great tradition of literature. So, if you want to be a part of the

bigger world, this big tradition of world english, you have to write at a higher level. If not, you are just a minor one and in time, you will also be part of the past. So, you must keep up with the traditions of the English language and what is being written. In England now, in America now, in Australia and Canada, those literature you must know. In malay, of course you evaluate the new things, the new trends in the area. In English, it is a bigger bigger world and there are lots of things translated into English. That also, you can learn from. If you translate well a work originally in Spanish and then become good English, it will become part of English literature too like 1001 Malam, which is a Malay work now, but of course it is not Malay, but then it was well-translated by Dato Onn but there were earlier versions. So if you could translate it, it could become a good work in Malay. So that is one of the challenges but thematically also you must be in touch. Sometimes in Malaysia, we are quite narrow. We only deal with the problems of the race and most writers dont care what happens outside, they dont try to solve universal problems, they try to solve local problems but of course you can take local problems and write these problems as though they are international, even religion. I think Malays like to write about religion, and good, but I dont think this is in Malaysia alone. I think the Arabs have problems interpreting religion for the modern times. Of

course, the Quran or the Hadeeth doesnt say that this is for the 7th century, when the Prophet(S.A.W) started to preach. It just says universal things and you interpret, otherwise why in those days they say that you cant take pictures? Because this is an image and also it came from the Old Testament, where if you take the image, you will worship the image. Now, images are everywhere. You are making an image of me, I hope you dont worship me. This type of things. I think Islam is a great religion, it is the muslims who are terrible. I am embarrassed. I couldnt go to the US. I was supposed to teach in Hawaii for some time. I thought it is unusual. Ive been there at least 10 times. I taught there, I studied there, I became fellow in good universities. Last time, I couldnt go. I dont know, maybe they mixed my name with another Muhammad Salleh somewhere. Sometimes we are quite primitive in our interpretation of religion.

Iqram : What criticism have you received so far from anybody because as a Malaysian who writes in English, because nowadays we see that there are some conflicts between the use of Malay and the use of English. Do people see you as trying to bring English above Malay or do people see you as fighting for the Malay language?

MH Salleh:

This is old history. Ive written in Malay and English together since the 60s.

Then in 1973, I started writing only in Malay. But I write in English for criticism. I studied world literature. I should be the happiest around when they have the English language. But Im not. I feel very sad. Each country, each people must have its own national language. And this is the language of your mother, your father, your culture, thousands of years. But I also believe that people should be international, most people should be international, especially Malaysians. They should know other languages, not only English. They should know Arabic, or Mandarin or some other language. We should know at least 3 languages, not only one and the sad thing is that we cant even handle

one. So, in those days, there were some but I never had that much problem because I was writing in two languages. In fact, I think that they were happy that I was writing in both because I helped them to translate. And I am not a propagandist, I write essays in English about Malaysian literature that not many people do. I got a history of modern malay literature, I have 2 or 3 collections of essays in the English language. I think Im doing some service to the Malay language by writing in English. So it is not the narrow way of writing in English, I dont, I write in both. So, it is difficult to accuse me but sometimes they accuse me of being too westernized but in England or Europe they think Im too Malay, so I dont win either way

Wardah :

Recently the government abolished PPSMI. In your opinion, what is the

rationale in abolishing PPSMI? Is the government trying to instill patriotism among Malaysian students?

MH Salleh:

Not really, its practicality. Ive been going to schools lately and before that

too. Okay, weve been talking about 12 years and still havent got our English, correct? So, when Mahathir introduced PPSMI, immediately, he asked the teachers to teach in the English language. So what type of English were they using? In cases like here, in Kuala Lumpur, children who are 7 or 8 years old could correct the teacher of English and they were very embarrassed. Some of them asked to be transferred somewhere. Mahayudin said only 5 %to 7% of the Mathematics and Science taught in the English language while it should be a 100%. It doesnt make sense, yeah? And I were a teacher and I cant handle English, to do my job, I need to teach in the Malay language. Second, I have a niece who teaches Mathematics in English. She said, mengajar dalam bahasa melayu pun dia tak faham, dua kali kalau dia kena tahu bahasa Inggeris. UNESCO says the best language to teach anything is in the mother tongue. This makes sense, right? If you teach Mathematics and Science in England in Hindi, I think we would have the same problem. And these people, they think they are in the cities, they dont know

what happens in Sabah, Sarawak or Ulu Tembeling or even Kota Bharu. I think if you want, you can branch out later on. If you want to do PhD in English, it is okay. By that time youll already have your roots. This one you dont even grow tiny roots. This is why we all dont speak Malay very well. It is all mixed up and it is very embarrassing. You go to Indonesia, try going to Indonesia and speak the way you are speaking now. Nobody will understand you and you will get embarrassed yourself. And Malaysians are used to mixing language. They dont use the English language very well, I know that. Very superficial sometimes. Not all. The depth and the colour of the language is not brought out. In Indonesia, they bring out the colour, the sophistication, the music of the language. I take off my hat to them. And I learn from them a lot. Sometimes I cant get good examples here. Usman Awang is no longer here. But he uses traditional language. I need good, modern, sophisticated Malay language. Where do I learn it from? I go overseas, to Indonesia. And they do it all the time. So you try reading Indonesians and see how they write our language, our mother tongue better as I think I am speaking better English than some Cockney. Because it is a second language. People with second language are better off. They get the good dialects and so-called Queens English and they are not shy of changing things. Nobody in their right mind would take a colonial language, a language that you dont understand, that the students dont understand and teachers using that as a medium of instruction, that is very difficult. Teach English well and it is solved. I know many countries that teach English well. Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Holland. German dont teach English very well but they are getting better. You can learn from them. They think that we want to be like Singapore. Singapore doesnt care for its culture. It has no history. It has no loyalty towards the language. They are loyal towards the profit and the commerce. I dont think that they are more loyal to other things than that. You can just go and see. Those things are just not important to them. Of course they achieve more things there but we have our culture, at least we can be proud of that.

Iqram :

We have many types of English in this world. We have Singaporean

English, Malaysian English. We even have books published about Malaysian English. So, do you see this as an epidemic. A disease that is affecting Malaysians. Because Malaysian literature that are written by Malaysian authors, they are good English.

MH Salleh:

This is the older generation, my generation, Lim Guan Eng, Shirley Lim,

and myself, we are tutors in the English department. We came from the English medium. Im a student of post-colonialism. I studied how the colonial language and colonial power changed people, make people very small. They made me feel as if my language is nothing, my culture is ulu, a primitive culture for a long time. There is an English language in a country like Malaysia means that we are still colonized in our mind. We need English to say things, to speak our ideas .In the country somehow if you are a student of a post colonialism, you are very embarrassed. The malays were the majority. And this is not a language that was born three days ago or three centuries ago, this is a few thousand years. This is a big language. So, something is wrong with us. Something is wrong with the Malaysians. Because we were made to feel like nothing, that the English language is big, in a way, it is big, but ours is not much smaller. We have a great tradition. Our pantun is one the best forms of expressions in the world. No contest. So, I was talking to my friend and I said, If you want to speak English, speak it properly. I dont like this Aiya, you dont make noise ah, I pull your ear one ah. There is this idea that if you speak Malay, you are low class, kampong. Speak English, then you are not, but his English is that Aiya, I pull your ear one ah. That is Manglish. That is very crude and low, unsophisticated. You cannot write poems in that language, not sophisticated poems in that language. I dont need that language. I need the greatest English language. That is how you make cultures. I have three children. I told them not to mix the languages. They dont speak Manglish. Manglish is due to the language not studied well. And then you become proud of your weakness in the language. A country that has a self identity should master its language.

Iqram : What kind of solution do you offer to the situation. How do we pull their interest in taking up Malaysian literature?

MH Salleh: Its not a case of either Malay or English. Malay has its place as the national language. We are also a country that likes to be international, so not only English, but other languages too. Second, Ive spoken to the ministry. Go to Holland and see how they do it. How come in just a few years, their students became very good and we teach for 13 years, the students still cant master the language. So it must be the teaching, the boring style. Its something that the students dont enjoy. The students are taking up literature but they are being taught by people who dont even know literature. So, you need to enjoy the language. I studied Shakespeare, I read a lot of poems, I enjoyed the language. If we only teach grammar, the students wont enjoy it. I think this is what being done. And we have not changed. So, study the other countries.