Talk:Malayan National Liberation Army

Malayan Races Liberation Army or Malayan National Liberation Army

Multiple sources, including the Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60 (ISBN 9812308296) published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies indicate that the name Malayan Races Liberation Army is in fact a mis-tranlation from the Chinese and the group identified themselves as the Malayan National Liberation Army. I suggest that the article be re-named to indicate this fact. - Bob K | Talk 19:36, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Malayan National Liberation Army

As has been pointed out on this page and its talk page, the name Malayan Races Liberation Army is a mistranslation of Malayan National Liberation Army.; the mistranslation should not be the title of the page. Unfortunately, there is no way to correct this because the name Malayan National Liberation Army is a redirect to the mistranslation which impedes anyone outside of an admin from moving the page.Somenolife (talk) 17:36, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Don't worry Somenolife, I have fixed the issue. I found an admin who had page mover privileges and he correctly renamed the page "Malayan National Liberation Army]]. BulgeUwU (talk) 17:36, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Why reverted the edit?

@Sisuvia: Excuse for the revert, as you wrote, is "[s]eems to be mostly original research". What does this even mean? I only added few things: Meaning of the word rakyat, popularity of the usage "PLA" and how these led to mistranslation, and other than these only added templates for the foreign language words. The rest is just redesign. Nothing changed in meaning whatsoever, nothing controversial too. Can you explain your point?
Kemkhachev (talk) 11:43, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

"On Wikipedia, original research means material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists."

You failed to provide reliable, published sources for all of the things you added. I'm also skeptical that you will find any for the claim that "rakyat" can be translated as "national", or that the translations "Malayan National Liberation Army" and "Malayan People's Liberation Army" both came from the Malay "Tentera Pembebasan Rakyat Malaya". Sisuvia (talk) 12:33, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sisuvia: Rakyat comes from Arabic ra'ayah, which means common people, subjects etc. (in my language too ra'ayah loaned as re'aya, which is used for subjects). It's most close to literal translation is "citizen" (it was produced from the aforementioned word in the late 19th century). For example, Malaysian Citizens' Declaration. However, it's usually translated as "people"/"people's"/"popular", like the Parti Rakyat Malaysia, so the "Malayan People's Liberation Army" name was origined from it, and it was definitely in use for some translations; even few modern examples can be traced thru Google Books (like this one).
As it's known, its name was National (so, had to be Nasional), however earlier name before the '70s change was "rakyat" (it wasn't added by me, it was already in the article). So it's the same with "Races Liberation Army" thing, a translation issue.
Even if I were wrong with the rakyat can also be translated as national (even though it would be erroneous), you could just delete that specific part.
Also I don't know how much it's correct, but according to the several sources the armed group's earlier name was "Malayan People's Anti-British Army" (MPABA), an obvious reference to the "Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army" (MPAJA). It was later renamed to MLNA in 1949. And later, during the second insurgency, it was renamed as Malayan People's Army (Tentara Rakyat Malaya, June 20, 1982), this time intended with "People's" since they already were using the Nasional in '70s.
Kemkhachev (talk) 15:09, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Don't explain yourself, have a reliable source explain for you. Yue🌙 15:55, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Yue: I gave sources/examples too.
Kemkhachev (talk) 16:03, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

You did not provide a source for "Malayan People's Liberation Army" in your edit. The source you gave in this thread doesn't really confirm that "Malayan People's Liberation Army" was an alternative name used for the group either as it's just a list of organisations. Your explanations in the edit and your explanations here both do not have sources to back it up (yet). I know this may seem to you like you're arguing the obvious (obvious trends, translations, alternate names, etc.), but you still have to provide a reliable source(s). Yue🌙 16:11, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Yue: I don't feel like I'm arguing obvious, if I would I would never try to explain it. But I don't know what kind of a source to provide, because I'm pretty sure (due to main issue being the MRLA) no source tried to explain why non-officially in some foreign language sources it was called as MPLA. In the article minzu (Wade-Giles: Min-tsu) given as explaining. I did the same for rakyat. If you want a source that explains the meaning of rakyat, this can be given easily (like this). Obviously I can't example the reasoning of random translators from the '70s. If you ask sources calling the group MPLA, surely one can find several other too. I mean I could even find many even just now, but due to recent thing going with Internet Archive it's hard. However, if you are asking me specific mentions, sure, I can give them, I can even give non-English mentions. Is this the thing you want?
Kemkhachev (talk) 18:12, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I'll just address what you added into the article one by one.

1. You claim that Malayan People's Liberation Army is a translation of the "popular Malayan name".

You should know that Malayan today generally, if not exclusively, refers to the Malay peninsula or the Malaysian states on the Malay peninsula, not the Malay language. You don't specify which translation it is either, only that it's the "popular Malayan" one.

2. You claim that rakyat can be translated both as "national" and "popular".

Based on my knowledge of Malay, rakyat may be translated as "popular" but not "national". This doesn't seem to matter anyway because no English translation of the group's name seems to have ever used the word "popular".

3. You go on to claim that the group's name can thus be translated as both "Malayan National Liberation Army and as Malayan People's Liberation Army".

The obvious problem here is that, if we're going to speculate where these translations came from, it's much more likely that "Malayan National Liberation Army" is actually a translation of Tentera Pembebasan Nasional Malaya, and we actually don't even need to speculate where the second one came from, as prior to your edit it was already stated that "Malayan People's Liberation Army" is the translation of what the group is commonly known as in Malay, 'Tentera Pembebasan Rakyat Malaya. So the two English translations, rather than being two different translations of a single Malay name, are two translations of two Malay distinct Malay names for the group. Sisuvia (talk) 11:05, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sisuvia:
"You claim that Malayan People's Liberation Army is a translation of the "popular Malayan name"." No I don't? I used the term "Malayan", because, Communist Party of Malaya (again, Malaya) didn't recognized Malaysia, and called their country as Malaya. So when I say Malayan and Malaya, it's Malaysia, not the general term.
I said rakyat can be taken as national, because, it's literal meaning is "citizen", alas, national because a "Citizen's Army" can both mean a "People's Army/Popular Army", and a "National Army". It was the word they preferred in Malay to imply the name NATIONAL, obviously it was the wrong decision and they changed it later on. It was wrong in Marxism a People's Revolution and a National Revolution means two different things, two different eras of a revolutionary type. Since CPM called "Malaya" being a colonial, semi-colonial country with English occupation, they naturally had to name their army "National Liberation" one, because the principal contradiction was the national one. However they choose the word rakyat, not me.
I said, there was a MPLA translation in foreign languages (NOT BY THE GROUP) due to its Malayan name having RAKYAT. I too would translate it as "People's" if I were going to choose the Malay name instead of Chinese one (Minzu).
Kemkhachev (talk) 00:21, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

1. "You claim that Malayan People's Liberation Army is a translation of the "popular Malayan name"." No I don't? I used the term "Malayan", because, Communist Party of Malaya (again, Malaya) didn't recognized Malaysia, and called their country as Malaya. So when I say Malayan and Malaya, it's Malaysia, not the general term.

There's no point in specifying the "Malayan" name then because the group has never not used a "Malayan" name the way you're defining the word. That still doesn't even answer the question of which name is meant when you said "Malayan People's Liberation Army is a translation from the popular Malayan name".

2. I said rakyat can be taken as national, because, it's literal meaning is "citizen", alas, national because a "Citizen's Army" can both mean a "People's Army/Popular Army", and a "National Army". It was the word they preferred in Malay to imply the name NATIONAL, obviously it was the wrong decision and they changed it later on. It was wrong in Marxism a People's Revolution and a National Revolution means two different things, two different eras of a revolutionary type.

Here you're just engaging in speculation, which has been the real issue here from the beginning. You have no evidence that "rakyat" was the word the group preferred in Malay to imply "national", or that both "Malayan National Liberation Army" and "Malayan People's Liberation Army" are English translations of the same name in Malay, whichever one that is, since you still haven't actually specified it. So, evidence, that's all we need.

3. It was wrong in Marxism a People's Revolution and a National Revolution means two different things, two different eras of a revolutionary type. Since CPM called "Malaya" being a colonial, semi-colonial country with English occupation, they naturally had to name their army "National Liberation" one,

Does your theory here not fall apart when taking into account the Malay name "Tentera Pembebasan Nasional Malaya" was adopted by the group in the 70s after the British had already left Malaysia for at least a decade? Sisuvia (talk) 04:11, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Quote from 1983 "In June last year our party Central Committee and Supreme Army headquarters issued a joint statement on changing the name of the Malay National Liberation Army [Tentera Pembebasan Nasional Malaya] to the Malayan People's Army [Tentera Rakyat Malaya] and renewed their determination to continue the revolutionary war until victory. The issuance of this statement had a great bearing on further developing the revolutionary armed struggled [sic] and mass movement."([1]) --Soman (talk) 10:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

From what I gather, MNLA would have been the official name until 1982, but that MPLA is common in English-speaking literature. It makes sense to keep the article at MNLA but in the article mention the different names assigned like MRLA or MPLA and the 1982 name change to MPA. Notably it seems the PKM/ML named their armed wing MPLA after the 1974 split. --Soman (talk) 11:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)