JAN 6 — The Ministry of Defence was made a laughing stock yesterday when someone discovered a poorly translated webpage on its site.

Be thankful it wasn’t, say, a weapons manual or border protection agreement. Instead, it was a webpage describing the ministry’s dress code and it probably cheered many a bored office worker. The full document can be read here.

Acceptable male attire, according to the site includes “long suite(s)”, “Bush’s jacket”, “tight Malay civet berbutang three” as well as “bersongkok bersamping dark.” Women were allowed to wear, among other things, “shine closed” and “skirts with exquisite.”

Both sexes were exhorted not to wear “dress up that thought it seems to want to attend a party or a picnic.” I agree, sentient clothing should not be allowed anywhere near the Defence Ministry, especially if it likes to party thus setting a bad example for other civil servants.

“Clothes that poke eye” were also frowned upon. I must say the ministry is most proactive in protecting itself from the dangers of rabid, vicious clothes that are not only party animals but prone to going for our eyes!

Sadly in the end, it wasn’t a daring document to protect us from rampaging “tight Malay civets” but the efforts of a likely overworked and underpaid ministry staffer. After many of us pointed and jeered at the site on Twitter and Facebook, the page was taken down with an official statement put up by the ministry that acknowledged the oversight in putting out such a bad webpage. Very professional, very prompt. Kudos to the ministry for an elegant response.

What did gall me were the many apologists on Twitter. One even said that the ministry was far too busy doing what it did best to care about an unimportant page detailing the ministry’s internal dress code.

My understanding is that anything worth doing is worth doing well. If you can’t get a decent translation up, then don’t put one up at all. If ministry staffers are too overworked and stretched to maintain the website properly, then don’t have one that’s hard to look after.

As the ministry deals with sensitive information that has no business being on any website, not even on an intranet, then it suffices to have just a webpage with the address, phone number and contact details of relevant staffers. You don’t even need a webpage with details of “ethical clothing”: just put up a sign outside with graphics. Simpler, cheaper and far less hassle.

Dual-language websites are not that easy to produce well. The way government websites are created, it is plainly obvious that the people in charge of said websites put little store by decent, written copy.

There’s a good reason why skilled copywriters earn decent livings in this country because words do matter. Good writing is not cheap. Sadly, I suspect the budgets on most government websites are spent entirely on the backend; the poor sod who has to update or write copy for the website is likely some junior worker with already far too much on his or her plate.

Clear, elegant copy that gets the point across is harder to create than some people realise. I am tired of people, especially higher-ups, assuming that writing is “easy”. “You just sit at the keyboard and type, right?” Stenographers are not writers.

In the United States, there now exists the National Commission on Writing. It was created to “focus national attention on the teaching and learning of writing, and respond to the growing concern... that, despite much good work taking place in our classrooms, the level of writing in the United States is not what it should be.”

Poynter Institute and senior scholar Roy Peter Clark describes the consequences of bad writing: “Poorly written reports, memos, announcements, and messages cost us time and money. They are blood clots in the body politic. The flow of information is blocked. Crucial problems go unsolved. Opportunities for reform and efficiency are buried.”

If the ministry cannot afford the resources to maintain a good website, it shouldn’t have to settle for a mediocre one. Let it have one single webpage instead. But defending mediocrity, justifying copy that sullies the image of the ministry and indirectly our country, that is indefensible.

I am so tired of Malaysians always settling for “cukup makan”. I am even more tired of Malaysians setting bars so low that you can get over them even when crawling on your belly. The rot in our country is partially caused by this acceptance of mediocrity; of politicians who can neither speak nor reason, of mega-projects with huge time and cost overruns. Is it so wrong to admit we can do better, we can aim higher, we must ask for more than what we’re getting?

When it is too much to ask that our hallowed Ministry of Defence maintain an image that speaks well of our country, then I guess it’s too much to ask me to be proud of it.

I leave you with the cautionary tale of South Korea’s embarrassment when a free trade agreement with the US had to be resubmitted to Parliament, not once but three times — all due to translation blunders. In a similar agreement with the EU, 207 mistranslations were found including: “transplant” mistranslated as “transfusion,” “subsidiary” as “local subsidiary” and “epidemiological” as “skin care services.” Of all the things that can be “lost in translation”, losing face shouldn’t be one of them.

* Erna Mahyuni is a sub-editor with The Malaysian Insider.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.