Somebody pointed me to an interesting article today. The Malaysian constitution has an interesting clause that gives specific rights only to the Malays, one of many ethnic and religious groups in Malaysia. This has given rise to a certain amount of ethnic and religious tension, and in view of the increasingly radical nature of Islam it's nice to see a more balanced attitude from a Malay: Remember what Islam has instilled in you, not what Muslims have told you.
The bio of the author was written in Malay, a language I once thought I understood. I didn't understand it all, so I went to Google translate for help. Between that and what I already understood I was able to make sense of it.
But how does Google translate go if you tell it that it's in Indonesian and not Malay? The languages are almost the same: mainly the loan words are different. And indeed, Google translate did about as good a translation when told it was Indonesian. But how about translating Malay into Indonesian? It seems to be roughly OK, with one important and obvious difference: di sebuah firma guaman di Kuala Lumpur becomes di sebuah firma hukum di Jakarta ( in a legal firm in where? ). Clearly Google Translate is overstepping its boundaries.