Saman, the novel by Ayu Utami, was published seven years ago to both acclaim and controversy. It won the prestigious Prince Claus prize in 2000. To date the novel has sold over 100.000 copies in its original language. Now for the first time it is available in English. On September 2, the English version was launched at Club Rasuna in Kuningan. The translation was done by the renowned scholar of Indonesian studies and literature Dr. Pamela Allen of University of Tasmania, Australia.

As translations go, I find Dr. Pamela Allen's translation to be accurate, albeit rather lacking in literary flair. This seems to be the problem plaguing most translations of Indonesian literary works. While at times we have had what I would consider a 'professionally-rendered' translation, we are still a far cry from the literary standards of translators of the William Weaver or Edith Grossman caliber. Over the years, we have had to rely on the few translators: Harry Aveling, Burton Raffles and John McGlynn. With the exception of John McGlynn, most of these translators are academicians. And as such, the translation can sometimes seem rather crisp, formally too correct, failing to capture the nuances of the original writer's style or his or her flair. Having said that, one should always be grateful to see an important literary work finally rendered into English.

Seven years after its controversial burst into the literary scene in Indonesia, one now reads Saman and wonders what the fuss was all about. Granted that by Indonesian standard, the themes of illicit affairs, forbidden love between a priest and a laywoman, and personal sexual gratification such as in a scene in which Yasmin is rubbing herself might have been considered shocking at the time. But the one thread in the narrative about Laila at the age of thirty still hankering for the right man to pluck away her virginity, and such feminist issues as whether a woman should wash her husband's foot in a wedding or why women are always the parties to be blamed in an illicit affair etc., strike me as rather passŽ now in this fast-paced post modern age Jakarta.