Analysis of “Teoh Beng Hock’s note”

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Sep 21, 2010

While MACC has framed the note as Beng Hock’s suicide note, I find it too far to be so, at least semantically in Chinese. …. They must be badly advised by someone lousy translator to mean “Good bye”. And MACC jumped on it and turned the simple status update note as a suicide note. What a fatal mistake.

By Guan Sin

Earlier, I have made the literal translation of the so-called Teoh Beng Hock’s note. I must highlight that at this point in time, the authenticity of the note is yet to be established. Furthermore, the circumstances under which the note has surfaced have made it even more questionable.

That aside, it is worth looking at the content of the note in detail, factoring in the context and Chinese language semantics.

The main purpose of the note appears to be a status update by Beng Hock to his boss YB Ean Yong. This is evident with the following points made in the note:

“They took away all the computers without our making a copy of the files. They keep pointing finger at you.”
“I said ‘mendapat lulusan YB’, they insisted to type ‘mengikut arahan YB’”

The second point is especially significant. It is the clearest indication that Beng Hock’s statement was not made according to his own words, and that MACC was actively after YB Ean Yong, by playing with the right words that carry legal liability to YB Ean Yong. It’s the clearest evidence from Beng Hock that MACC was abusing its power to pursue the opposition leader YB Ean Yong.

The most difficult part to translate correctly is “Pretending to understand/know, but still dragged you into the trouble.” (“不懂装懂，结果连累了你。”) The context is important, and probably YB Ean Yong would be able to understand what Beng Hock actually meant to say. I can only speculate as follows: Beng Hock had earlier offered to go for the interview at the MACC office, reassuring his boss that he knew how to tackle the interview by the MACC officers without causing any legal implication to his boss. Obviously, to Beng Hock’s mind after the intimidating interview, he had failed to protect his boss from any legal liability, hence his regretting words of ‘Pretending to know/understand’.

While MACC has framed the note as Beng Hock’s suicide note, I find it too far to be so, at least semantically in Chinese. First and foremost, they wanted to make us to believe it’s suicide note based on the final two words: 再见. The most precise translation in English is “See you”, or in Malay “Jumpa lagi”. They must be badly advised by someone lousy translator to mean “Good bye”. And MACC jumped on it and turned the simple status update note as a suicide note. What a fatal mistake.

If it were indeed a suicide note and Beng Hock indeed wanted to bid his final farewell, he would use the term 永别 (“farewell forever”) or even 来生再见 (“see you in the next world/life”), as any typical Malaysian Chinese would.