I, published by Lutan’s Widjaya Press of Jakarta, was numbered “first part, volumes I-II-III,” indicating its derivation from the Wakaf Republik edition. Considering that Jakarta (then Batavia) was under Dutch control until the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949, it is unlikely that a work of this nature would have been published there until 1950 at the earliest.
The only complete edition of Volume II is that published by Pustaka Murba in Yogyakarta, probably between July and November 1948. Pustaka Murba was established by Djamaluddin Tamim, on Tan Malaka’s instructions, in April 1946. Djamaluddin was under detention from July 1946 to July 1947, and it was most likely on his release that work began on the original stencilled edition of Volume I (published in June 1948); publication of Volume II would have followed as soon as practicable. Djamaluddin left Yogyakarta in November 1948. The Dutch occupied the city from December 1948 to December 1949, making publication during that period in Yogyakarta unlikely.
Volume III has appeared only in stencilled form. It was published with a typeset cover by Pustaka Murba, Jakarta, so it is unlikely to have been published before 1950. Indeed one source maintains that it was not published until 1956.12 The stencilled copy bears stamped repagination for the second half. Pages 53-143 are stamped over page numbers 1-91, indicating previous issue, or planned issue, in two parts. I was fortunate enough in 1972 to obtain access to another typescript copy in the possession of Djamaluddin Tamim, which probably was the manuscript used for production of the stencilled version.
As copy-text for my translation I have used the Widjaya edition of Volume I and the Pustaka Murba editions of Volumes II and III. All three were obtained in 1972 from the Wason (now John M. Echols) Collection of Cornell University Libraries. All the other editions mentioned above have been used as comparison texts to reconcile problems appearing in the copy-text. Variations discovered in this process are indicated in the annotations to my translation.13
Several parts of From Jail to Jail have been published separately, including the following: Pandangan hidup (Weltanschauung) (Djakarta: Widjaya, 1952); Dari Ir. Soekrnao sampai ke Presiden Soekarno (Djakarta: Yayasan Tjahaja Kita, 1966); and “Tan Malaka’s Manila Memoirs,” in the Philippine journal Solidarity 1 (no. 1, 1966). A Japanese translation by Noriaki Oshikawa is now underway, Volume I having appeared in 1979. Excerpts from the autobiography also appear in a number of secondary sources on different periods touched on in the autobiography.
Methodology
The Text
The manuscript of From Jail to Jail presented many difficulties, not the least of which was the large number of typographical errors, characteristic of Indonesian publications during the 1940s and early 1950s.14 While it might be expected that Volume III in stencil form would have a particularly high number of errors, this holds true for Volume II also, although, appearing in printed form, it clearly did not benefit from the same standard of proofreading as Volume I. Overall, I have identified over four hundred typographical errors, an average of one per 7.36 translated pages in Volume I, one per 1.88 pages in Volume II, and one per 1.57 pages in Volume III. These errors fall into a number of different categories. Some 4.3 percent related specifically to the printing process, as opposed to typing or copying errors. These in many cases proved the most obvious errors, but were among the hardest to correct. Lines of type, and occasionally whole paragraphs, were dropped from the text or transposed. In all these cases, I have indicated in footnotes the error and, where possible, have attempted to rearrange the text into a meaningful form. As mentioned above, I have had the benefit of alternative texts with which to compare my copy-text and have indicated where these have been used to resolve difficulties.
Not unexpectedly, foreign words and names account for a high percentage of the errors (18.2 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively). While some of these may be Tan Malaka’s, a large number reflect absolute unfamiliarity with the language or name being used, making it extremely likely that the copyist or typographer made the mistake. The fact that many foreign words are spelled correctly in one place and incorrectly in another strengthens this hypothesis.
Punctuation errors abound throughout the text, accounting for 12.3 percent of total errors. Almost invariably these involve something as insignificant to understanding as a full stop substituted for a comma, a sentence commencing with a lower-case letter, or quotation marks omitted from conversation. I rarely found it necessary to draw attention to these errors in a note.
The remaining typographical errors fall into the categories of addition (8.7 percent), omission (17.7 percent), substitution (23 percent) and transposition (6.8 percent) of letters, syllables, or entire words. Many of these were obvious and easily corrected (for example, menudjud = menudju; dn = dan; atau = atas; tenutlah = tentulah) and I have not indicated their occurrence in a note. Where the error gave rise to substantial uncertainty of meaning in the text, I have given in a note either a full explanation of the reconstruction or simply the word as it appears in the manuscript and as I have reconstructed it (for example, disetudjui = ditudjui). These errors are the standard types encountered in text editing and can have occurred either in the printing process or at any stage in the copying of the manuscript or even in Tan Malaka’s original manuscript itself.15
Handling all these textual errors and inconsistencies necessitated the construction of a detailed set of guidelines and policies. While at times I was tempted to document every error in the manuscript, and did in fact prepare footnotes to this effect, finally I decided to pull back from this course and document only those errors substantial enough to involve reconstruction and even guesswork on my part. This decision was influenced partly by the essay of Robert Halsbrand “Editing the Letters of Letter-Writers” in which he says,
I believe, perhaps naively, that the exact reproduction of a manuscript is impossible. Even if we used a photoprocess, we should then begin to worry about the color of the ink, the quality of the paper, the manner of folding the sheet, and so on. When we decide to reproduce it by means of typography, we have made a great concession; and once having made it we need not be stingy as to its extent. No reader of the book will be fooled into thinking he has a manuscript in his hand.16
How much more unattainable is the goal of an “exact reproduction of a manuscript” when one is dealing with a translation. Footnotes documenting every single typographical error could perhaps stand in a parallel text, but they seem quite out of place in presenting the manuscript in translation.
A second major challenge in the manuscript was that of language.17 Tan Malaka’s Indonesian often reflects more the style used in the 1920s, when he left Indonesia on his long exile, than that predominant in the revolutionary period. In a language evolving as quickly as modern Indonesian, this means that considerable differences exist between Tan Malaka’s style and that of the period in which he wrote the book and, even more so, that of present-day Indonesian. In large part these difficulties could be overcome by reference to contemporary dictionaries and native speakers of Indonesian. The differences from modern Indonesian are principally those of variant spellings (bergumandang for berkumandang), the relative lack of differentiation between various affixes (memindjam kepada for memindjamkan kepada), or consonant changes (mempastikan for memastikan).18
In addition to these archaic and irregular forms of Indonesian, From Jail to Jail presents problems created by the frequent appearance of foreign words and expressions from a wide variety of languages. Dutch, English, German, French, Latin, Minangkabau, Chinese, and Japanese terms appear throughout the text. With the exception of Dutch, I have retained all Tan Malaka’s foreign vocabulary, in most cases giving the English translation in brackets and where necessary a footnote explanation. This policy was adopted in order to retain the cosmopolitan flavor that pervades From Jail to Jail; eradication of these expressions would, I believe, have detracted considerably from the text. In particular, I considered it important
