Bahasa Indonesia student translations sweep the Miami Lingua Mater Competition
Miami kinesiology and music vocal performance major Jeremy Hardjono receives top honors.
Bahasa Indonesia student translations sweep the Miami Lingua Mater Competition
The Interactive Language Resource Center (ILRC) has announced the winners of the Miami Lingua Mater Competition.
This year, Miami kinesiology and music vocal performance major Jeremy Hardjono — along with his future RedHawk younger siblings Samuel and Alethia — received top honors for translating both Miami's Alma Mater and Miami's Fight Song into Bahasa Indonesia.
The competition invites students and alumni to translate Miami's Alma Mater and/or Miami's Fight Song into a language other than English. Participants also submit a video of their translation, which can be performed anywhere on campus for students, or anywhere in the world for alumni.
“I was inspired to enter the competition because it would give me an opportunity to sing with my siblings, which I always love, and because I thought it would be interesting to incorporate my unique heritage into my school’s Fight Song and Alma Mater,” Hardjono said.
Submissions were judged on the quality of translation, the musical quality of the performance, and the creativity of the submission’s visual presentation.
“Jeremy’s entries had everything I was looking for in a submission,” said Daniel Meyers, ILRC director and competition judge. “His translations were accurate, creative, and artistic, matching the spirit and tune of the English versions. He incorporated interesting scenes and backgrounds of the Miami campus, [and] he sang the songs clearly and in tune. The cherry on top was that he involved his younger siblings who are aspiring RedHawks!”
In total, the competition received 11 submissions in seven languages including American Sign Language, Bahasa Indonesia, French, isiZulu, Luxembourgish, Sinhala, and Spanish.
This year’s competition also yielded multiple runners-up.
“The runners-up were really close,” Meyers said. “Once we finished scoring the submissions, the judging panel decided to name two runners-up for the Miami Fight Song portion of the competition.”
The runners-up for the Miami Fight Song included several students from Associate Professor Andrew Offenburger’s South African history class for their isiZulu translation, as well as MUDEC Student Activities Coordinator Daniel Riecker along with several students and professors on Miami’s Luxembourg campus for their Luxembourgish translation.
Miami students Kathleen Taylor and Diana Kwak were selected as the runner-up for their French translation of Miami’s Alma Mater.
The Alma Mater and Fight Song runners-up will receive $150 and $100 respectively, while Hardjono will receive a combined prize of $400 for sweeping both categories.
Hardjono’s translations will also be sung by the Miami University Men's Glee Club at a future concert tentatively scheduled for April 29, 2022.
“Winning this competition means a lot to me, and holds a special place in my heart because as a member of the Miami Men’s Glee Club, I will be performing the songs with them for an audience at the home concert,” Hardjono said. “Singing the songs in my family’s home language will make them more personal to me, and it will be a memory I’ll always cherish.”
