This article was originally written by Chan Wern Shen on the old Lowyat.NET website.
Update: Looks like the well dressed men in the Ministry realized their error and have taken down the Engrish page. But fear not dear readers, for nothing gets deleted on the internet!
Thanks to these handy guidelines from our Ministry of Defense, we now know what the government deems to be “ethical clothing” for government servants.
In short, men should always be dressed in formal attire (slacks, long sleeve shirt tucked in, tie, jacket optional) or traditional garb (baju melayu). For the women however, it is a little more diverse. Here are several rules of thumb that women should follow:
1) Traditional garb is OK.
2) Skirts are OK as long as they aren’t shorter than knee length.
3) Sleeves are compulsory.
4) Clothes should not be too tight fitting or eye poking.
Now before you raise your arms up and scream “sexism“, let’s clarify something first. This post isn’t meant to highlight or scrutinize the government’s choice dress code. They could force our government servants wear bunny suits for all we care (now that would at least be something to look forward to when visiting government offices, eh?), but one thing they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with is the blatant mistranslation of Bahasa Malaysia to English.
Hell, even Google Translate does a better job at reinterpreting Bahasa Malaysia phrases into English, so what’s the story behind this website? Maybe Tricubes should venture into the translation business? On second thought, maybe not. They seem to have a thing for typos…
(Source: Ministry of Defense, Screenshot: Scribd)
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