Welcome to the most densely populated island in the world: Java. This 124,000 km2 Indonesian island is home to more than 150 million people, including more than half of the entire Indonesian population. Despite this, Java is one of the least linguistically diverse areas of the incredibly multiethnic nation, with only a handful of languages spoken natively. Most of the island speaks Indonesian, but only as a second language—the native languages include Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and Banyumasan.
Banyumasan claims almost 14 million native speakers, which is higher than the ethnic Banyumasan population of about 9 million. It’s often considered a dialect of Javanese, even though it can differ significantly in certain cases and has retained phonology and even grammar from Old Javanese, spoken in the 9th to 13th centuries. Since it’s often relegated to “dialect” status, representation for Banyumasan is relatively poor, with specialized translation services difficult to access. But that’s what we here at TranslationServices.com are here to change: we’ve just launched our own Banyumasan translation team.
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Discovering Banyumasan and how it differs from Javanese
Banyumasan—or, as it’s known to native speakers, Ngapak—is spoken in the western part of Central Java, with speakers found in the regencies of Banyumas, Cilacap, Kebumen, Banjarnegara, Purbalingga, Pemalang, Tegal, and Brebes. Pockets of Banyumasan speakers can also be found in neighboring regions of West Java and the westernmost province of Banten. Dialects include Banyumasan proper, as well as Tegalan and Banten. Ultimately, Banyumasan can be classified as an Austronesian language, just like most other languages in Indonesia, including Bahasa Indonesia itself.
Grammatically, Banyumasan is largely similar to Javanese, except that it exhibits features of Old Javanese grammar even in its modern form, which can sound jarring to Javanese speakers. As in many other Malayic languages, verbs are not conjugated for tense or aspect—rather, auxiliary words like “tomorrow” or “already” are used to indicate what time an action took place. Verbs also aren’t conjugated for person, like in many European languages. One unique characteristic of Banyumasan is that it generally uses informal speech, whereas Javanese and many other languages in the region employ different vocabulary across a range of politeness registers. In Banyumasan, the intermediary and formal registers are rarely used, except when speaking to strangers assumed to from the eastern areas of Java. This means that if you’re looking for a high-quality Banyumasan translation, you can’t work with a Javanese translator—but we have just the Banyumasan translation team for you.
Banyumasan translation services—for everyone
We want to ensure that you’re getting high-quality, accurate Banyumasan translation services—not just Javanese translation services repackaged for Banyumasan. So, we set out to hire the best Banyumasan translators we could—native speakers from all over the western regions of Central Java and beyond. We’ve hired Banyumasan translators who speak various dialects of the language, including Banyumasan proper, Tegalan, and Banten, and they’re eager to help you with your Banyumasan translation project—whether it necessitates translation into or from Banyumasan.
If you’re seeking a particular type of translation services—say, academic translation services, business translation services, or literary translation services—our Banyumasan team can help you. They’re experienced in different areas of translation, making them well suited to translate your research surveys, journal articles, educational materials, business plans, financial reports, press releases, ad copy, books, poems, short stories, websites, apps, games, blogs, speeches, and just about anything else you can think of. If your text touches on complicated topics that require specialized knowledge, simply let us know, and we’ll try to match you with the most suitable Banyumasan translator on our team.
Our Banyumasan team is eager to help you realize the benefits of translation. Send us a message now to place your first order!