What kind of fool is it that would invest all that money into research and collating information about the Jakarta Stock Exchange and rendering the contents into English to sell to a multinational target market – and would not invest in a decent copywriter or English- language editor to get their language right?
hahahaha…..
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I come across this sort of thing often, and I’ve banged my head trying to figure the ‘why’ part. I’ve come up with a possible theory: Continuing Feudalistic beliefs — and/or the saying “asal bos senang” mentality.
If the boss/manager does not think they need to outsource for language help, for instance, not a soul in the organization is going to argue.
I was doing some research on Internet trends in SE Asia recently, and came across these papers by each APEC country during a 2004 ministerial conference on ICT development. Every single one of them; from PNG to Laos and Japan to Mexico was written in spotless, fluid English… except for one. That was the one done by then-Indonesian minister of communications. It was a disaster, and I even felt a twinge of embarrassment myself. I could not help but wonder how it happened, but I could almost imagine something like this: The minister supposedly is known by his underlings and others as someone who speaks English, so he has too much pride to say “help me out here”, and not one of his staff would dare say “sir I think this sentence is wrong” OR, “sir do think we should get a copywriter to check it before submitting it to all the APEC ministers?” So things like this are the product of this continuing feudalism.
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What is even more appalling is the standard of English on almost all the glossy brochures and flyers put out by private schools in Indonesia. I once attended an ‘education fair’ at which I found serious language errors in every single stall’s publicity material.
The underlying cause, as Riccardo says, is a dangerous mix of ignorance and arrogance – but even worse, it reflects a sublime disregard for the international community’s perception of Indonesia.
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Unspun 
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