‘Lindsay’s achievement as a translator is all the more admirable for the vast array of subjects she lends an English-speaking voice to articulate – political, intimate, sexual, spiritual, historical, philosophical, everyday…. As a translator myself (mostly from Russian), and the constant reader of literature in translation, I cannot speak more highly of her work.’
– Robert Dessaix, (writer, translator)
‘[Hersri Setiawan] pays close attention to language, and his translator, the veteran Jennifer Lindsay, nimbly conveys in English the nuances, regional differences and playfulness of the Indonesian language. She captures Setiawan’s focus on the slang and wordplay of the prisoners, as well as the language used by the soldiers to show their resentment of the more educated prisoners from Java.’
– Margaret Scott reviewing Hersri Setiawan, Buru Island: A Prison Memoir (2019)
… the ‘good, painstaking translation by Jennifer Lindsay’ of Pariyem’s Confession by Linus Suryadi … ‘a poem … elegiac about the ways and private calendar of old Java’ , which portrays the ‘old world of feeling’, where ‘only Javanese words could describe certain Javanese things, and only those words could unlock Javanese sentiments.’
– V.S. Naipaul, in Beyond Belief (1998)
From Reviews: of Between Tongues
‘…a volume like Between Tongues comes as an unexpected but welcome surprise that makes us sit up and take notice of an important area of theatre studies that seems not just to have been overlooked in the past, but to have barely existed.’
– Professor Thomas Hunter, Asian Theatre Journal
‘The translator, Jennifer Lindsay, renders Goenawan’s subtle, reference-rich essays into fluid English, in which his breadth of influences and historical sources bring constant surprise and delight.’
– Review of In Other Words in The Saturday Paper (2016)
‘Jennifer Lindsay’s many years in Indonesia form the basis of her wide knowledge of local cultural, political and social life. One of the few Australians thus equipped, she conveys a profound understanding of our close but radically different neighbour. Chief among her accomplishments are her translations of essays — in turn reflective, incisive and generous — by Goenawan Mohamad.’
– Jury’s comments, 2017 NSW Premier’s Translation Prize (2017)
‘Jennifer Lindsay’s translation of Mohamad’s Conversations with Difference is a superb example of cultural transplanting of ideas and points of view.’
– Jury’s comments, 2003 NSW Premier’s Translation Prize (2003)
Praise for Heirs to World Culture
‘This book will become a founding publication of research on the cultural and social history of Soekarno’s Old Order. It will stimulate new research […] and begins to fill in the gaps that have existed for the past half a century’
– Professor Laurie Sears
‘Heirs to World Culture […] reveals the highly charged debates and conflicts over artistic practice in the newly independent Indonesian state during the Soekarno era in their infinite complexities’
– Professor Frances Gouda
Jennifer Lindsay 