Gather and Resist

 Today I face the challenge of describing, in Indonesian, an extinct Karo Batak ‘tritik’ technique. This technique was practised on white cloth, to which, in past centuries, the Karo had relatively easy access because of their proximity to the trade on Sumatra’s East Coast. They brought the cloth back to their villages further inland where the women dyed it. In the cloth they called ‘Batu Jala’, the women would insert a basting stitch and then pull on it to gather the cloth tightly. Along these basted, gathered lines, the cloth would resist the dye, and the finished cloth would have white lines. I watched Nande Peringitten do this in 1986, but I regret that I did not record the vocabulary that she used.

Batu Jala

The translator of my English text used the Indonesian word ‘kumpul’ for the English word ‘gather’. I did not know whether to trust this translation. Was it google giving the common translation for groups of people or things, or was it a technical term for gathering cloth? It seemed just too much of a coincidence for the word ‘gather’ to be used by both Indonesian and English for this description!

 

I turned to an Australian friend in Jakarta, a textile aficionado, who has resided a long time in Indonesia. I showed her pictures of the Karo technique and compared it with 'smocking'. She comes back with: ‘Tarikan benang supaya bentuk kerut2 kecil dan rata di kain’. Gathering is described as ‘pulling on the thread so that little, even pleats are formed in the fabric.’ I am very excited, because this very practical, feet-on-the-ground translation makes sense, but my excitement recedes. I see that the making of ‘little even pleats’ describes smocking more than tritik. Where did she get her answer? She laughs and says, ‘Google’. 

I decide that it is time to cross-check with tritik practitioners. One small problem: I don’t know any!

 

But I know a very enthusiastic batik student, mas Huda, in Yogyakarta, and I send him the images of the Karo technique. He immediately labels it ‘jumputan’ and says that he will consult his student notes for more information. 

 

Via-via, I then get in touch with the lovely tie-dye artist, Caroline Rika, who examines the photographs and points out that the Karo practised a stitch technique (‘teknik jahit’). She knows it as one of the techniques that belong to the larger category of ‘ikat celup’, literally, ‘tie dye’, or ‘jumputan’.

The enthusiastic student gets back to me quickly with a citation from his student notes:

‘The tritik technique is done by basting a pattern on cloth, pulling the stitches very tight, dyeing the cloth, then removing the stitches so that the motif appears. The steps are inserting the basting stitch, pulling, then dyeing.’ (‘Teknik tritik dilakukan dengan menjelujur pola pada kain, menarik jahitan erat-erat, mencelupkan kain, lalu melepaskan benang untuk memunculkan motif. Tahapannya meliputi penjahitan jelujur, penarikan/pengerutan, dan pencelupan.’) This is very helpful. In the first place, I have it from student notes, and probably the way it was told to him by his teacher, so neither google nor my question, which might influence an answer, is involved. I assume his description is idiomatic. Second, he has taught me that the expression for ‘basting stitch’ is ‘jahitan jelujur’, or ‘menjelujur’. Third, I have confirmation that ‘gathering’ is ‘pulling’ in Indonesian (tarik). In fact, one of them tells me that the word ‘tritik’ may derive from the word ‘tarik’. If that is the case, a more solid confirmation could not be had! One cannot help but feel elated when one can emerge from a rabbit hole.

 

But I am still stuck down there a bit longer. Caroline has sent me two references to publications, which give insight and also pause. The first[1] uses the concept of ‘jahit celup,’ literally ‘stitch dye’, but apparently the equivalent of the English ‘stitch resist’. It encompasses ‘tritik’, and ‘sasirangan’ (stitch resist in Kalimantan) -- and undoubtedly the Karo technique, too, although it is hardly known except in early Dutch textile literature (e.g. Loebèr). I am now satisfied that I know an official Indonesian way to describe the Karo technique: 'jahit celup', and 'jumputan'. 

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[1] Titisari, Bintan & Kahdar, Kahfiati & Mutiaz, Intan. (2014). Pengembangan Teknik Jahit Celup (Tritik) dengan Pola Geometris. ITB Journal of Visual Art and Design. 6. 130-142. 10.5614/itbj.vad.2014.6.2.4.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286191784_Pengembangan_Teknik_Jahit_Celup_Tritik_dengan_Pola_Geometris/citation/download

 

But things are more complicated than this. I am also learning how much the Indonesian literature has been influenced by Western discussions of 'resist ’dye'.  This is interesting because the concepts used in the Western textile literature originate from Asia. The words ‘ikat’, ‘batik’ and ‘tritik’ were introduced into Dutch at the turn of the 19^th Century and into English not long afterward. Nian S. Djoemena’s well-known Batik dan Mitra: Batik and its Kind, (Djambatan, 1990) depicts the different kinds of ‘resist dye techniques’ using the images found in Jack Lenor Larsen’s, splendid coffee-table book[1] documenting resist-dyed textiles around the world, is probably the best-known reference on the topic. The section on ‘The Classification of Resist Techniques’ (p. 15) has become the standard in academic literature. The source is Alfred Bühler (1946).[2] I would have to do more research to find out where Alfred Bühler obtained his knowledge, and whether and how Dutch scholarship (sourced from Indonesia) was incorporated. Suffice it to say that this appears to be an area of conceptual syncretism in technical terminology and classification. It is beyond the scope of my translation work to explore that. 

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[1] The Dyer’s Art: ikat, batik, plangi, 1976 (Van Nostrand Reinhold)

[2] See also Buhler, Alfred. 1972. Ikat Batik Plangi: Reservemusterungen auf Garn und Stoff aus Verderasien, Zentralasiën, Südosteuropa und Nordafrika. 3 vols. Basel: Pharos-Verlag Hansrudolf Schwabe. 1972

There is another step that needs to be taken. How is the technique described in a Batak language? I contact Lasma, my Simalungun Batak ‘daughter’ to ask if she knows if there is a Simalungun Batak word for ‘menjelujur’. Lasma is always very clear-headed and knows a lot. She fell in love with the Batu Jala when she learned of it, and contacted an elderly woman in her village who once made it, thus teaching me that it was also once a Simalungun cloth. “Mejjelujur’, she answers, but I strongly suspect that this is just the Simalungun pronunciation of the Indonesian word. I suspect that a Batak term would relate to the word ‘jahit’. I have no more access to the Karo Batak traditional vocabulary. Nobody makes these resist textiles anymore and Nande Peringitten has passed away. Has this terminology been lost, so that we must rely on the Javanese-Indonesian-Western terminological merger? Has the merger also meant the end of Javanese traditional knowledge about resist dyes? What about the indigenous knowledge in Kalimantan and S. Sumatra? Does indigenous knowledge and vocabulary related to resist dye techniques exist any longer in Indonesia? If it does, it is fading rapidly.

 

 

For my translation purposes, I have found the following words and they are enough for now:

Perintang warna - resist dye

Tekstil kelompok celup rintang – class of resist dye textiles

Jahit celup – stitch resist, including tritik, sasirangan and the Karo variant

Jahitan ditarik – said for ‘the cloth is gathered’

Kerut-kerut kecil – the little folds or pleats that result from gathering the cloth along the line of stitching

Jumputan – plangi, tie-dye

 

Thanks to Mara, Nia, Huda, Caroline Rika, Nashir and Lasma. I wish we could gather and talk shop. We are scattered all over the globe, but we form a community in a shared search for a few words.

How 'Weft wrapping' became 'Wrapping the Warp': An Exploration of Weaving Terminology

My challenge, today, is in translating the Batak technical weaving terms, manirat and bonggit lilit, into Indonesian.  

The Batak have their own language, as well as a unique way of understanding the weaving arts. This is reflected in their weaving vocabulary. Academic English makes use of a 'standard vocabulary' that Irene Emery and others have developed over decades to make it possible to discuss weaving techniques across cultural boundaries. Indonesian is the language that will be used in the weaving text that I am translating from English. As far as I am aware, there is no standard weaving vocabulary in Indonesian. Indonesian takes from the indigenous vocabularies found in the archipelago, and has also incorporated many terms and perspectives from Dutch and English. My task is to translate from English to Indonesian in a way that makes sense within the Batak weaving world because the Batak will be my primary audience. They are the practitioners of the weaving tradition that I am trying to describe. It would be thoughtless to make translations that alienate Batak readers from their own art! The text that I am translating has already done that; it was written in English academese. I know, because I wrote it! I observed the Batak techniques and then scoured the literature to figure out how to label them correctly in academic idiom.

My task, now, is to search for the Indonesian words for these Batak terms, and if they exist, discern whether they convey what the Batak understand by their terms. If there is no ‘official’ translation, or if the translations do not accurately represent the Batak way of understanding their techniques, I must search for words that are more appropriate. I do not want Batak readers, upon reading my translation, to be led toward a Western way of seeing their craft tradition. This does mean, however, that I must understand the point of view offered by the Indonesian translation in addition to the Batak point of view that I am trying to achieve. Translating is not a simple matter of substituting Indonesian words for the Batak or English words. I need to understand the 'way of seeing' wrapped up in all of the words.

In short, my task is challenging, if not impossible. But I do my best to approach my target. I hope not only to assist in building an Indonesian weaving vocabulary, but to point to the logic and value of different vocabularies and embedded perspectives. 

Manirat

The Batak word, manirat, translates into academic English as ‘weft twining’. Batak ‘twiners’ practice this technique to decorate the fringe ends of their weavings. It is an off-loom technique. In academic English, the horizontal element, understood as ‘weft’, is twined around the vertical element, understood as ‘warp’, hence ‘weft twining’. 

A twined edge in the Siimalungun Batak cloth called 'Bulang' (Collection Author) 

Twining or winding is a concept that is held in common in Indonesian and Batak, and is indicated with the same word, lilit. However, for Batak twiners, the words ‘warp’ and ‘weft’ are not applicable. Because manirat is performed off-loom, Batak twiners speak of ‘twining yarn’ and ‘fringes’ but not ‘weft’ and ‘warp’. In addition, the word ‘lilit’ emphasizes what is being wound rather than what is doing the winding, whereas the element doing the winding receives more emphasis in English. As a result, the translation of the English expression ‘weft twining’ becomes ‘fringe-twining’ in Indonesian to represent the Batak term, manirat: pelilitan rumbai dengan benang lilit. 

 

Batak	English	Indonesian
Manirat – to make the sirat	Weft-twining - twining  (the fringes) with weft	Pelilitan rumbai dengan benang sirat (wrapping the fringes with the yarn used to make the sirat)
Bonggit lilit – patterning in a cloth made by wrapping the warp	Weft-wrapping – wrapping (the warp) with weft	Pelilitan benang lungsin dengan benang pakan (wrapping warp yarns with weft yarns)

Bonggit Lilit

The technique that the Batak call bonggit lilit means the bonggit pattern achieved by wrapping. This is weft-wrapping in academic English. (Readers may be familiar with this technique as ‘kilim’ because the weft of kilim rugs is wrapped around the warp.) In Tarutung, one of the Batak areas where the technique is practised, when weavers wish to make the weft-wrapped pattern, they stop shooting regular weft through the warp with a shuttle, and instead wrap thicker weft, of various colours, by hand, around the warp yarns to create patterns. Because they are working in the loom, both 'warp' and 'weft' are at play. Because the warp yarn is being wrapped, the word ‘lilit’ is again applicable, in both Indonesian and Batak. Once again, the word emphasizes the element that is being wrapped rather than the element that is doing the wrapping. ‘Weft-wrapping’ in English must become ‘wrapping of warp’ in the Indonesian translation, pelilitan benang lungsin. What that conveys makes sense both in Indonesian and to Batak readers. (My translator made a simple google-type translation without knowing the weaving background, and translated 'wrapping' as 'packaging'!)

 

Weft wrapping (bonggit lilit) in the Toba Batak 'sadum' cloth

The way the two techniques are presented in English has them in the same conceptual arena: a horizontal element winding around a vertical element. This essential similarity is not disturbed by 'manirat' being off-loom and 'bonggit lilit. on-loom. For Batak weavers, however, precisely this difference puts them in different conceptual camps. How the techniques are executed is much more prominent in the Batak vocabulary. The English standard vocabulary emphasizes the result rather than the process.

 

It is notable that all the elements implied in the two vocabularies are the same: warp and weft, on- and off-loom, and twining/winding/wrapping. What differs is the conceptual framework. If English has been geared to expressing universals through generalizations, such as ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ elements, and Batak technical descriptions are wrapped up (if I may) in the specifics of the process, Indonesian zig-zags between the two, with many terms that are cognates to the Batak terms even while many perspectives are built on Western academic orientations. The Indonesian terms/explanations that I opt for must be understandable and accurate for an Indonesian reader at the same time not doing violence to the Batak way of seeing the processes.

 

It can take a lot of time to translate a single word because it can send me down a variety of rabbit holes, such as searching for the implications of the words warp and weft, on-loom and off-loom, wrapping and weaving, universal and specific. Each rabbit hole offers a tiny glimpse into another worldview, each piece of weaving vocabulary contributing to a larger pattern that will only gradually emerge. Patience, persistence, and holding one’s (pre-)conceptions in abeyance are required to get to the nub of the differences. The process is exciting because it offers a doorway into the unknown. I can imagine weaving techniques being compared not just at the level of what transpires in the weavers’ hands, but also how she frames them in her mind. 

 

For decades I have worked within the academic framework of building a universal, standardized weaving vocabulary. Having now realized how profoundly techniques are culturally-embedded and not 'neutral', I have also to recognize that my focus on a universal vocabulary has been an exercise in cultural erasure. A putatively universal prism has offered only a narrow, ethnocentric way of understanding Batak weaving. Seeing the Batak world through their weaving vocabulary is the more exciting project. Sometimes I lose sight of the value of the ‘universal’ project. What was it, again, and why was it valid? Who does it serve?

A twined edge in a Toba Batak cloth called 'Bolean' (Private Collection Pangururan)

Emery, Irene. The Primary Structures of Fabrics: an illustrated classification.  

 

New York : Watson-Guptill Publications/Whitney Library of Design ; Washington, D.C. : Textile Museum. 1995.