Muhammad Hafidh
Al Mukmin.

Translation between Indonesian and English is, when done well, an unremarkable trade — the document arrives, the document is read, the document does what it was supposed to do. Hafidh trains for that result. The work is not literary; it is institutional. A contract that will be argued in court, a transcript that will be evaluated by an admissions committee, an academic paper that will be read by reviewers in another country. Each one has a body that will receive it, and that body has expectations.

[Placeholder — add Hafidh's narrative biography here: where he studied, what drew him to legal/academic translation, formative experiences, languages worked in beyond EN/ID if any. 2–3 paragraphs of substance, written in the same calm editorial register as the rest of the page.]

Padan's head translator is certified by Himpunan Penerjemah Indonesia (HPI) — the national association of Indonesian translators — as a legal translator for English and Indonesian. In Indonesia, the highest tier is the sworn translator, appointed by the Minister of Law and Human Rights (Menteri Hukum dan HAM) under Permenkumham No. 29 Tahun 2016 through a Decree (SK Menkumham) that names the languages and grants the seal. That appointment is in process. Until it is issued, work is delivered under HPI certification — with the translator's signature and stamp — and we will publish the SK Menkumham number here the moment it is granted.

The receiving body decides the translation. An academic transcript translated for a US admissions office is not the same artefact as one translated for an Australian one. A contract translated for an Indonesian counterparty assumes a different terminological frame than one translated for international arbitration. Hafidh begins every job by asking where the document is going.

Don't invent. When a word in the source language has no clean equivalent in the target (materai, kuasa, cum laude, lulus dengan pujian), the translation says so — in brackets, in a translator's note, in a glossary annex when warranted. Smuggling a false equivalent into the body of the document is worse than naming the gap.

The page is a unit. Translations are produced page-for-page where possible. Stamps, seals, signatures, manuscript marginalia, and damaged regions are described in [brackets] at the location they occupy in the source, so a reader holding both documents can read them against each other.

One translator, one document. Padan does not subcontract or split documents across translators. The terminological consistency of a translation comes from one person doing the work from end to end.

Confidentiality is not a service add-on. Every document submitted to Padan is held under standard NDA terms whether or not the engagement proceeds. Source files and translation memory are deleted thirty days after delivery, on request.

Padan works in both directions of the English ↔ Indonesian pair, but with different default registers. Translations into Indonesian use the formal administrative register expected in Indonesian legal and academic documents — EYD orthography, full diacritics where the original requires, and idiomatic case endings. Translations into English use a clear, formal register suited to the receiving institution: legal-formal for contracts and court documents, academic-formal for transcripts and articles, plain-formal for civil-register papers and bank statements.

We don't translate into or out of third languages. If your document is in a third language (Arabic, Mandarin, Dutch, etc.) and needs to reach Indonesian or English, you will need a sworn translator in that pair — we can refer you to colleagues if helpful.