Lack of Access to Reading Books Causes Low Literacy

Jakarta, MINA – The Head of Language Development and Founding of Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture and Technology Endang Aminudin Aziz, revealed the cause of the low literacy level of the Indonesian people due to the lack of access that the public had to reading books.

“Because of the lack of access to reading books. Then, the lack of time spent, which is spent, by someone to read. It’s not that they have low interest in reading. No,” said Amin, as he is called, during a Riung Media activity in North Jakarta on Thursday as quoted from Republika.co.id.

Amin said seeing the problem, he asked his team at the Books Agency, Standards Agency, Curriculum, and Educational Assessment of the Ministry of Education and Technology to prepare literacy books. The preparation of the book was carried out for the PAUD level up to the high school level.

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“Coupled with the translation of books from foreign languages, as well as regional languages into Indonesian,” said Amin.

He revealed, so far during 2021 there have been 1,375 books translated from foreign languages into Indonesian.

Meanwhile, there are 250 book titles translated from regional languages to Indonesian. The regional language books come from technical implementing units (UPT) throughout Indonesia.

“There is a question that arises, ‘why don’t you just write in Indonesian, not in the local language first?’ I said, this is what we call a one-time boat rowing two until the height of the island is exceeded,” he said.

By writing books in regional languages, he said, the regional languages would be relatively protected. Then, these writers will also be able to improve their ability to translate it into Indonesian, according to one of the programs in the Language Agency.

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“These results can be read for other people. That’s translation. We have never done this before. Translating books for literacy activities, which are not so large in number,” he said.

He targets that over the next four years there will be at least 5,000 titles of books from foreign languages that have been translated into Indonesian. The foreign language he meant was not only English books, but also languages from other countries.

“Anything, not only English, maybe from Japanese, Mandarin, German, any language. This is what we then translate,” he explained. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)