Word: bahasa
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There is also peace. The tsunami helped extinguish a decades-old conflict between Indonesian government troops and separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (known as GAM by its initials in Bahasa Indonesian), who laid down their weapons in 2005. Despite sporadic political violence, Aceh's war is over. One enterprising local travel agent even offers "guerrilla tours" to GAM's former jungle strongholds...
...protagonist, Hidayat, is a Jakartan intellectual caught up in the Japanese occupation. The conquerors use Bahasa Indonesia, the archipelago's lingua franca, as an administrative tongue in their polyglot territory. Hidayat - drawing on Alisjahbana's actual wartime employment in occupied Indonesia's language office - is put in charge of formalizing its grammar and syntax. In the novel (as it was in life), the office is a meeting place for nationalists who seize on Japan's defeat in 1945 to declare independence and adopt Bahasa Indonesia as the new nation's official tongue...
...first person they want to meet is Obama, says Parnohadiningrat Sudjadnan, the Indonesian ambassador to the U.S. "Back home people think of him as one of us, or at least one who understands us," he says, adding that they are delighted to find that Obama speaks passable Bahasa, the language spoken in Indonesia and Malaysia. The international fascination with Obama was on full display when Obama launched his campaign last February and media from more than 60 countries flew in to Springfield, Ill., to cover the event...
Although English is the language of business, there is essential need for translators who understand Farsi, Urdu, Bahasa Indonesian, Tamil and Arabic. It goes back to what Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: "There are no facts, only interpretations...
...TIME reporter bought Samurai from a stall along Taweewong Road in Phuket, Thailand. "We've had Last Samurai for three days already," said vendor Nook (not his real name). At his booth, just 50 yards from an official Warner Bros. store, Samurai was available with Thai, Chinese or Bahasa Indonesia subtitles. Business has improved, Nook says, since police stopped shaking him down for a monthly $60 payoff. Now he pays just $150 a year for an official ID card. Piracy has become so normalized that it has its own bureaucracy. Two days later, a reporter bought Samurai in Shanghai...