Language, Nation

Language, Nation
By Muhammad Yamin

When it is small and tender years,
The child sleeps in its mother’s lap,
Its mother sings songs and lullabies to it,
Praising it as is right and proper,
Rocking it in love night and day,
In its cradle suspended over the land of its ancestors.

Born into a nation with its own language,
Surrounded by its family and relations,
In sorrow and in joy and in grief;
Its feelings of solidarity is consolidated
By its language, so beautiful and melodious.

We lament and wail, and also rejoice,
In times of good fortune, catastrophe, and danger,
We breathe so that we can go on living
To continue to use the language which is an extension of our spirit
Wherever Sumatra is, there is my nation,
Wherever Pertja is, here is my language.

My beloved Andalas, land of my birth,
From my childhood and youth
Until the grave envelopes me,
I shall never forget my languae
Remember, O youth, Sumatra is in distress
Without a language, the nation disappears.