“ Thanks before.”  Spend enough time in Indonesia, and chances are you’ll hear those exact words spoken by a well-meaning person. You won’t laugh because you’re polite and respect the person’s effort to speak English when it’s not their primary language, but you’ll go ahead and add it to your growing library of “Fascinating Indonesian-English Phrases That Earned a Chuckle.”

“Thanks before” is in fact a literal translation of “terima kasih sebelumnya,” which is often said as a sign of additional appreciation to someone who is about to help you before the deed is actually done.

Broken English has long been a part of everyday life, and not just in Indonesia. The many amusing by-products of shoddy translations can result in comical moments, like when you’re driving under a “ply over” — or when that phrase is “corrected” into “ply ofer.” Perhaps a panic-induced giggle came out of the street billboard directing you to “hide drug,” which is actually an advisement to stay away from substances.

There are a variety of reasons for these droll gaffes when translating Bahasa Indonesia terms into English. No matter how prevalent English may be in Indonesian pop culture, it is still a language learned yet rarely practiced.

There are also intrinsic structural differences in how Bahasa and English sentences are formed and spoken.

“There’s a fundamental difference between the languages,” said Nathan Sartain, a native English speaker and teacher at the EF English First language learning center. Read more.

See: The Jakarta Globe