Bicultural more than just bilingual, our linguists are experts in localizing translations for specific communities within tight timeframes. This is a particularly valuable talent in a country as geographically fragmented as Indonesia: an archipelago that is home to over 300 ethnic groups, many with their own languages.

About Bahasa Indonesia

The official language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia, used nationwide as a lingua franca. Spoken by more than 230 million people, it is derived from a variety of sources, including Sanskrit, Malay, Arabic, and Dutch. Although written in the Latin alphabet, it has eighteen consonants and five vowels, with some modifications representing sounds not found in English.

Indonesian Variations, Dialects, and Other Languages

Too heterogeneous to classify as an entire market, the Indonesian population is about 40.2% Javanese, 15.5% Sundanese, 3.58% Batak, 3.22% Sulawesi ethnic groups, 3.03% Madurese, and 2.88% Betawi. The remaining 31.59% consists of multiple ethnic groups that are even smaller.

With its scattered topography (five main islands and some thirty smaller archipelagoes), it’s no surprise that Indonesians developed a host of dialects over the centuries. Just as an example, 114 Indigenous languages are spoken on the island of Sulawesi alone (which is just a bit smaller than Great Britain).

• Javanese is spoken by some 85 million people—the Orang Jawa—living mainly on the island of Java and forming the largest ethnic group in Indonesia. A member of the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) language family, the tonal pitch of its twenty vowels and 31 consonants may be daunting to Western ears.
• Sundanese is found mainly in the highlands of western Java, spoken by about 32 million people. Although the Orang Sunda are devout Muslims, some pre-Islamic ideas still permeate their rituals.
• Batak is spoken by some six million descendants of a powerful Proto-Malayan people, living in relative isolation in the highlands around Lake Toba in northern Sumatra.