On 19th November, Jauhari
Bilingual Toastmasters Club held a demonstration meeting at Andalus private
school. The intent was to charter a club
there. I served as Language Evaluator,
my 119th Toastmasters event on the 141st day of the
Toastmaster Year. The meeting was
conducted in Malay, and much of the rhetorical flavour and beauty of the
speeches cannot be fully conveyed once translated into English.
Muhammad Nurhakim, DTM, served as
Toastmaster of the Day. Syaiful
Hakimnudin served as Timer. A bilingual
club is not merely a Toastmasters club translated into a second tongue. Research on bilingual public speaking
consistently finds that rhetorical devices, alliteration, idiom, and rhythm
rely on the sound and structure of the specific language they were composed in,
and rarely survive translation with equivalent force. A club running its meetings in Malay is not
doing the English-language Toastmasters programme with different words. It is doing something structurally distinct,
and evaluating it fairly requires judging it on its own linguistic terms rather
than measuring it against an English-language yardstick.
The Charter President Elect’s Choice
of Metaphor
Charter President-elect Abdullah Uthman
welcomed all attendees, expressing his hope that the club would grow and do
well. He admitted surprise at being
nominated as charter president and observed that whilst others in the room
aspired to be chairmen, he wanted to be a fisherman. That is a better metaphor for club leadership
than most incoming presidents ever land on.
A chairman commands a room. A
fisherman waits, reads the water, and understands that the catch depends on
patience and conditions he does not fully control, a more honest description of
what building a new club from nothing demands.
The Speeches
Fathur Rahman, delivering his maiden
speech, gave a humorous account of his secret to looking younger than his more
than four decades, his affection for his wife, layered with the comedic
travails of being the youngest of five children.
Muhammad Nurfarhan spoke on mentorship
within Toastmasters, arguing that knowledge loses its value when it is not
passed on and enhanced. That claim is
not sentiment. It describes why
mentorship-driven organisations consistently outperform those relying on
passive knowledge transfer, since unshared expertise dies with the person
holding it rather than compounding across a membership.
Wiwiek Najihah spoke on the ordeal of
dealing with procrastinators, delivered with genuine self-deprecation as, by
her own admission, the ultimate procrastinator.
Beneath the humour sat a heavier account: the time she did not spend
with her grandfather, and her regret once he had passed on. It was a stark reminder of what gets taken
for granted while it is still available, and speeches built on that kind of
honesty carry weight no rehearsed anecdote can match.
The Evaluators and Results
Siti Zuhriyyah, Nurliza Sawi, and Othman
Sadli served as Project Evaluators. Best
Speaker went to Fathur Rahman. Best
Evaluator went to Othman Sadli. Best
Table Topics Speaker went to a guest, an encouraging sign for a club still
charting its own course, three months into its inaugural year.
Terence Nunis, DTM | Division Advisor, District 80 Division M | Club Advisor, AIA Toastmasters | Past President & Founder, Awesome Toastmasters
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