Reprinted from Pulau Pinang Magazine, “Convent Light Street” issue.
“As the government of the Straits colonies has officially announced Sundays as public holidays, all will have the chance to enjoy themselves on their day off. The rich will satisfy themselves with good food and the theatre and then fall into slumber. Youngsters will indulge in gambling and vice until they forfeit all their money and contract venereal diseases. But what about the old and the weak? They have nothing to do. If they had books to read, they would be quite happy to read translated Chinese novels and to acquaint themselves with new things which they have never heard before...”
SO WROTE Chan Kim Boon in a preface to the first volume of the Baba-Malay translation Song Kang from the Chinese classic Water Margin. Armed with the philosophy that his translations would entertain and educate the society in which he lived, Chan Kim Boon became renowned as an exponent of Baba-Malay literature. His audience was the Malay-speaking Baba society concentrated in the Straits Settlements of Malacca, Singapore and Penang at the turn of the century.
