Dispatch #23
Read about the wisdom of the Semende tribe, Finnish elite dart players afflicted by a mysterious mental paralysis, and Istanbul’s continuous political crisis.
Hello and welcome to Translator’s weekly Dispatch, where we bring you summaries of compelling stories written beyond the Anglosphere.
In the midst of Turkey’s ongoing political crisis, a sociologist shares his thoughts on the recent protests in May, warning against the rosy romanticisation of young people as the new saviours of the secular republic. (Click here for earlier coverage of the political situation in Turkey in Dispatch #14.)
An article from an environmental media organisation in Indonesia looks at how traditional forms of female-led custodianship in Sumatra have allowed the Semende tribe to flourish.
And lastly, a feature about how Finnish elite darts players have been afflicted by dartitis, an ailment between mind and body, nerves and emotion.
We hope you enjoy the read.
P.S.: In the meantime, tell us what you like and dislike, themes you’d like to see explored from the perspective of different linguistic media landscapes. And, as ever, feel free to recommend specific pieces we should summarise for our Dispatches, or translate in full for the magazine.
Here’s what we’re looking for and how to let us know.
The Wisdom of the Semende
How a land stewardship custom honouring eldest daughters has allowed a Sumatran indigenous group to flourish over three hundred years
South of the shiny skyscrapers of Singapore and west of the beach parties of Bali lies Sumatra – a vast, forested island at the western edge of the Indonesian archipelago. The largest island wholly within Indonesia’s borders, Sumatra is a place where modernity presses in from every side: new roads, palm oil plantations and the endless churn of commerce. Yet in the highlands of southern Sumatra, the Semende tribe has held its ground, quite literally, for centuries.
While the surrounding world has rushed toward headlong development, the Semende have managed to preserve a way of life rooted in a sense of place and a finely tuned ethic of stewardship. Writing for the Indonesian environmental news site Mongabay.co.id, journalist Taufik Wijaya offers a window into this resilient community: one that has learned, against the odds, how to protect both its land and its traditions.
According to local lore, the story of the tribe itself began in 1650 when seven wise ancestors known as puyang gathered in a place called Paradipe and struck a foundational accord. The details of that agreement, and even the names of those seven figures, are preserved with remarkable fidelity. For more than three centuries since, the Semende have tended not only to their rice paddies and coffee groves but to a living archive of who they are and what they stand for based on that accord.
At the heart of this quiet endurance is a custom known as Tunggu Tubang, a system that weaves inheritance, gender roles and land rights into a tapestry of mutual obligation. Under this tradition, the eldest daughter of each family is considered the keeper of its heirlooms: the stilt houses that stand like sentinels in the village, the rice fields carved into hillsides, the gardens that feed both body and spirit. These are not considered commodities to be traded on an open market; they are entrusted, generation after generation, to those who will care for them in good faith.
“Our traditional lands have survived because of Tunggu Tubang," says Sarmani, a resident of Muara Tenang Village, where some houses date back centuries. The custom has proven remarkably adaptable, coexisting with Indonesian property law while still honouring ancestral mandates. Responsibility, in the Semende worldview, is not a static thing: an eldest daughter can lose her status if she neglects her duties, to be replaced by a younger sister, or in some cases, a son’s wife if there is no daughter to inherit. What ultimately matters is not so much who holds the title, but whether the land is tended in accordance with custom.
Today, the Semende’s customary territory encompasses fields, farms and nearly 15,000 hectares of coffee plantations, lush green slopes that have become the tribe’s economic lifeline. Yet this is not a monoculture imposed on the land; rather, the article suggests, it is a living system that reflects the Semende’s ethic of shared belonging.
The name “Semende” itself contains this idea of collectivity. As Wijaya explains, the word can be traced to same nde (“same belonging”) or se-man-de (“a unified house owned by all”). Their resilience is not accidental but actively cultivated: a form of what scholars like Handoyo, an anthropologist with the BRIN Population Research Center, call “epistemic resilience”, the ability of a community to sustain its local knowledge and values in the face of external pressures.
All in all, the article suggests, the story of the Semende reminds us that to protect a piece of earth is never only a question of legal rights or physical boundaries. It is about cultivating a web of relationships, between people, ancestors, land and future generations, that binds them all together in a moral economy of care.
In Wijaya’s telling, there is a lesson here for policymakers and would-be stewards of the environment alike: that true sustainability demands more than the language of conservation or the bureaucracy of land management. It asks for the patience to listen, the humility to learn and the imagination to see another way of living with the land.
Original article (“Relasi Sosial dan Kearifan Suku Semende Menjaga Wilayah Adat”) by Taufik Wijaya was first published in Bahasa Indonesia on 1 June 2025.
It’s available here.
Mongabay.co.id is an Indonesian environmental news organisation founded in 2012 to raise awareness of environmental issues, an offshoot of the US-based Mongabay.com.
Summary by TMH
Young People to the Rescue in Turkey?
Mass protests in Istanbul have rekindled old notions about the role of young people in political resistance to authoritarianism – but just below the surface there’s anxiety and fragmentation
On the 19th of March this year, Ekrem İmamoğlu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party and Istanbul’s charismatic mayor, was arrested. Days away from becoming the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) presidential candidate, İmamoğlu’s sudden removal from the political stage was seen by his supporters as nothing less than “a coup against our next president.” Tens of thousands answered the call to protest. A human tide surged through Istanbul, fuelled by a sense that history had finally found its moment. The district of Saraçhane became the focal point.
The sheer energy mobilised in Saraçhane electrified the opposition. The scenes seemed to confirm what many had hoped: that young people – so often dismissed as apathetic or docile – were still capable of defying water cannons and riot shields. University students, in particular, emerged as the bright new protagonists of this drama. They mounted barricades, braved tear gas and reclaimed an old idea, an echo of Paris 1968: that students are the vanguard of Turkey’s restless democracy. Belying the notion of Generation Z’s softness, word spread through the streets that “a generation as hard as stone is coming”, one ready to pick up the mantle of democratic defence in the face of authority.
Ulaş Tol, a sociologist, seems determined to complicate this seductive picture. Writing for Birikim Magazine, Tol tries to make sense of Turkey’s “ungraspable youth” – tutunamayan gençlik in Turkish – not by romanticising them, but by sifting through data, surveys, and hard truths to try and understand them. The British novelist E.M. Forster wrote that “youth matter[s] intellectually” – which they undoubtedly do. But Tol analyses them sociologically, uncovering a present-day condition defined as much by anxiety and exclusion as by idealism and rebellion.
He reminds us that behind the defiance of Saraçhane lies an accumulated burden of psychological strain. Today’s young people, he observes, carry an almost existential sense that no matter how they strive, they will remain trapped in a rigged game, one where justice erodes, nepotism thrives and meritocracy is little more than a fairy tale. It is a generation whose youth has been endlessly postponed, suspended in a limbo of deferred dreams and simmering discontent.
Look closely at those crowds in Saraçhane, Tol suggests, and you’ll see they are not solely the domain of the university student or the middle-class idealist. Yes, student movements sparked the admiration of the nation, but interwoven into those protests were countless young people who belong to neither classroom nor workplace. This precarious cohort, the NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training), the so-called “sitting youth” – oturan gençler in Turkish – defy easy slogans and photo-op narratives. Their idleness – which shouldn’t be mistaken for passivity – is itself a quiet form of protest, a symptom of being shut out of an economy that makes no room for them.
It would be comforting, the article says, to imagine these young people as a single bloc ready to rescue Turkey from democratic backsliding. But Tol warns against such consoling illusions. Age, he points out, is an unstable marker; youth is a fluid, almost mythic category that shifts with circumstance. The values attributed to Generation Z – secular, progressive, cosmopolitan – are not evenly distributed. Many are just as likely to drift towards nationalism and deep-seated resentment, a volatile brew made more potent by a sense of betrayal by both elites and the system at large.
The result of Tol’s analysis is an uneasy portrait of a generation both hopeful and fractured. Their anger, he writes, is directed not only at those who hold power, but also at those perceived to have escaped: the secular, educated, comfortable classes who are just privileged enough to have been able to leave. In these crowds of “‘lumpen’ youth” Marx’s old concept of the Lumpenproletariat finds new life: disaffected, disorganised and yet brimming with a dangerous energy that can swing any number of ways.
What, then, is to be done with these contradictory young people? Tol’s message is clear: the opposition cannot afford to mistake visible courage for uniform allegiance. They must resist the temptation to romanticise “youth” as a magic solution to Turkey’s current democratic malaise. If they wish to build a movement worthy of Saraçhane’s raw energy, the article suggests, they will have to grapple with the messier reality behind the barricades: the “sitting youth”, the anxious, the angry, the drifting. Only then can they hope to turn these scattered fragments into something more than just a fleeting headline, perhaps even into the cornerstone of a more just republic.
Original article (“Tutunamayan Gençlik”) by Ulaş Tol was first published in Turkish on 27 May 2025.
It’s available here.
Birikim Magazine is a Turkish leftist magazine with a long history: begun in 1975, banned by the military from 1980 to 1989. It has been online since 2005.
Summary by TMH
The Ailment Affecting Finland’s Darts Elite
When performance falters without warning, is it the body or the mind that fails?
In a fascinating piece for Finland’s national broadcasting company, journalist Hannes Nissinen unpacks a bizarre and little understood condition haunting Finnish darts players: dartitis, a mysterious affliction that causes even elite athletes to suddenly and inexplicably lose the ability to release the dart from their hand. “It struck like lightning from a clear sky,” says Jyri Ussa, one of Finland’s top-ranked players, recalling the moment during a national championship when his hand simply froze: “there was no pain, except mentally.”
Dartitis, known in medical terms as task-specific dystonia, is a rare neurological condition that primarily affects people performing high-repetition fine motor tasks such as musicians, golfers and now it seems, dart throwers. Ussa, who trains obsessively and once dismissed dartitis as an excuse for poor performance, found himself on the receiving end of its sudden onset: “I didn’t admit it to anyone unless they asked.”
The phenomenon is not new. British darts legend Eric Bristow famously succumbed to it in 1986, and Veijo Viinikka, executive director of the Finnish Darts Association, recalls how it blindsided him during a competition in 1993: “It was a terrible nightmare” – one that lasted for a year and a half. Viinikka, like Ussa, described a deep sense of shame and confusion: how could a simple, mechanical action suddenly become impossible?
Rebekka Ortiz, a specialist in movement disorders at Tampere University Hospital, explains that in cases of task specific dystonia, neural signals from the brain to the muscles misfire. “It’s a bit like a computer bug in the brain.” The result: involuntary muscle contractions that paralyse performance. The condition’s precise cause is unknown, but it tends to affect those who have practised the same motion to perfection for years. “When you train one movement excessively, the fine-tuning circuitry in your brain can get scrambled,” says Ortiz.
Crucially, many players describe dartitis as both physiological and psychological. The symptoms often emerge under pressure (on stage, in competition) but persist even in private practice. “It’s not just choking” Ortiz clarifies, using a term often used to describe seizing up in sports’ competitions or musical performances: “The fact that symptoms continue outside public performance suggests a deeper neurological basis.”
For some, recovery has been possible. Viinikka, after 18 months, re-learned how to throw using different muscles and even went on to win the Finnish championship. “I cried with joy,” he recalls. Ussa, too, has managed to return to competition, though the spectre of dartitis still looms. “My hand trembles a bit, but the full lock hasn’t returned,” he says, cautiously optimistic. Still, he refuses to demonstrate how bad things got: “I’m afraid the symptoms will come back.”
More than just a sports mystery, this piece is a meditation on vulnerability, perfectionism and the psyche’s role in physical mastery. Players, once confident and invincible, are suddenly brought to a halt by their own nervous systems. And in a sport defined by repetition, where success is measured in millimetres, that disruption is not just frustrating, it destablises identity.
“Everyone says darts is a hobby,” Ussa reflects. “But if you do it long enough, travel the country, it becomes a way of life.”
As with writer’s cramp or musician’s dystonia, dartitis reveals the body’s capacity to rebel against perfection.
Original article (“Suomalaisia tikanheittäjiä vainoaa mystinen vaiva: he eivät yhtäkkiä pysty heittämään tikkaa”) by Hannes Nissinen was first published in Finnish on 7 June 2025.
It’s available here.
Yle is Finland’s national public broadcasting company streaming out of Helsinki. It was founded in 1926.
Summary by ZN
That’s all for now – we hope you’ve enjoyed the read. Keep an eye out for our next Dispatch of summaries this time next week!
The Translator team