The island of Borneo is home to no shortage of indigenous languages. Across the three countries that span the Maritime Southeast Asian island, Malay (including Indonesian) is the dominant language, but large communities of minority language speakers exist in all areas of the island. The Indonesian portion of Borneo accounts for most major indigenous languages on the island, but Brunei and Malaysia also host some with large numbers of speakers. One of the biggest indigenous languages in northern Borneo is Dusun.
As of 2010, Dusun boasted around 260,000 native speakers, and the number is likely higher today. However, even as the number of ethnic Dusun people continues to grow, the Dusun language is continuously threatened by Malay, the majority language in all Dusun-speaking areas. Dusun is recognized as a minority language in Malaysia, giving the minority community resources to grow and thrive, but in Brunei, it has no official recognition and is rapidly being overtaken by Brunei Malay, the local lingua franca. At TranslationServices.com, we want to help support the Dusun language and its community, so we’ve proudly set up our own Dusun translation team.
Why not ask us today about a free quote for our Dusun translation services?
Dusun: the native language of northern Borneo
Dusun is spoken across Brunei and in parts of the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah, as well as the Federal Territory of Labuan. It historically faced challenges, particularly due to Mustapha Harun’s assimilation policies in the 1960s and 70s, through which minority languages were suppressed in favor of Standard Malay. Today, the Dusun people have their own cultural association in Sabah that regulates the language, giving it stronger footing than many other minority languages. The Bundu-Liwan dialect, spoken in the Bundu and Liwan valleys, is used as the standard dialect, as it was determined to be the most mutually intelligible with other dialects.
Dusun comes from the Austronesian language family, like Malay, but it’s entirely different from Malay. In fact, Tindal Dusun is more similar to Philippine languages than Malay, featuring a Philippine-type focus system that highlights a particular element of the sentence to focus on. By default, Dusun uses a verb-subject-object word order, which is common among Austronesian languages, although a subject-verb-object word order, like in English and Malay, is also possible. Pronouns come in three different cases, in addition to an emphatic version for added emphasis. Dusun certainly isn’t an easy language to translate to and from, but that’s precisely why we’ve hired native Dusun speakers for our team.
Let us tailor our Dusun translation services to meet your needs.
We’re passionate about helping people break down language barriers, no matter the direction, which is why our native Dusun-speaking translators are eager to help clients translate both from English to Dusun and from Dusun to English. Since Dusun comprises various dialects, we’d be happy to help clients access translation services in the precise dialect they need—that’s why we’ve hired Dusun translators from all over Brunei, Sabah, and Labuan. If you want a translator from a particular area, just say so!
We also cater to various translation domains, such as academic translation, business translation, literary translation, and localization. If your Dusun translation project falls into any of these categories (or another specialty), just let us know. We have academic translators who can work with everything from research questionnaires to lesson plans, business translators who specialize in translating everything from financial reports to ad copy, and literary translators who excel at translating everything from novels to poems. We also have localization experts who can translate all sorts of digital media, including websites, apps, and games. In short, we’re your go-to team for Dusun translation services.
If you’re ready to get started with Dusun translation services, so are we! Reach out today to place your first translation order!