Threads of Dignity

By Putu Oka Sukanta
Translated by keith Foulcher

The Mystical Path of Badrul Mustafa

By Heru Joni Putra
Translated by George A. Fowler

IN MEMORIAM

Alan Steves in the 1970s

Alan M. Stevens (1935-2024) died Thursday, March 14 of cardiac arrest in New York City. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, where he won a citywide French competition. After graduating from Columbia University in 1956, he went on to a PhD in linguistics at Yale, specializing in phonology and Indonesian languages. His 1960 field work in Madurese started a long career of research, writing, and travel. In 1967, he co-founded the linguistics department at Queens College, CUNY; he taught there and at the CUNY Graduate Center for more than 35 years. With A. Edward Schmidgall-Tellings, he co-authored A Comprehensive Indonesian-English Dictionary, which is today the standard in its field. After retiring from academia in 2005, he devoted himself to Indonesian and Malay translating, interpreting, and consulting until his death.

Alan’s dictionary includes entries that are technical, non-standard, slang, bahasa gaul, and even those that are jorok. He always maintained that “you can never have too many dictionaries,” as sometimes a secondary definition would be included in one book, but not others. Or, the way a definition was worded in one book might be subtly different from others and spark a revelation in the researcher’s mind.

Every English-language translator of Indonesian is indebted to Alan.

Thanks to Roggie Cale for preparing this obituary.

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