Toward an Indonesian–Russian Sworn Translation Pathway in BIPA

Abstract

Indonesian–Russian is a low-resource language pair: translation corpora, professional training materials, institutional support, and certified pathways remain scarce despite growing academic, legal, and commercial exchange between the two countries. Examination of the official language-pair list published by Himpunan Penerjemah Indonesia (HPI) for its National Certification Test illustrates this institutional gap: a Russian-to-Indonesian pathway exists only for general texts, excluding legal texts, while no Indonesian-to-Russian pathway exists in either category, unlike English and Mandarin, which are fully supported in both directions. This absence affects academic, legal, civil, and commercial contexts requiring certified documentation. This study argues that closing this gap requires building professional language infrastructure, not only teaching materials, and proposes BIPA and RFL (Russian as a Foreign Language) education as its foundation. Using document analysis of HPI’s certification scope and Indonesia’s sworn-translator regulatory framework, the study develops a preliminary competency framework informed by established translation-competence models and by the author’s published Indonesian-for-Business textbook (B1–B2, 2025), together with her ongoing development of an A1 Russian–Indonesian textbook series, where AI-assisted methods accelerate terminology and resource development for underrepresented language pairs. Core competencies for future sworn translators are identified – legal terminology, document conventions, and certification standards – and a preliminary curriculum framework is outlined. The central argument is that BIPA should extend beyond general communication instruction toward professional linguistic competencies supporting international mobility, legal certainty, and sustainable cross-border cooperation, with sworn translation as one emerging competency.