Indonesian literature abroad

       Indonesia is to be the Guest of Honour of the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015 -- a great opportunity for a country from which relatively little has made it abroad, but which they also have a lot of work to do for to get up to speed. As an editorial in the Jakarta Globe points out, this is A New Chapter for Indonesian Literature -- but:

Yet despite being the world's fourth-largest nation by population, Indonesia is not known internationally for its writing, with only a very small number of works having been translated into the world's major languages.

The government has long neglected local literature, as evident in the absence of literary studies in the school curriculum, and shown little appreciation for authors and their works. There have been no special government programs to make great Indonesian literary works available in English, let alone other languages.

       Already a bit late in the day they add:

That is why we hope the move by the Frankfurt Book Fair, the biggest and most important event of its kind in the world, to name Indonesia the guest of honor at the 2015 fair will push the government to get more Indonesian books translated into German and English.

       Unfortunately, preparations seem to be ... lagging -- I don't even see an official site yet (most recent countries put theirs up years in advance, and while I'm not thrilled about this year's guest of honour's, Finnland. Cool. (seriously, guys ? just giving up on the English-language market from the get-go ? (the name of the country is, indeed, 'Finnland' -- in German; in English, not so much)), at least it's something; the closest I can find for Indonesia is this page.
       The Frankfurt Book Fair's Guest of Honoure review page has some data from recent GoHs:

• 2013: "The reading public was presented with more than 335 new releases (in German) from Brazil, including 117 fiction titles."
• 2012: " German fans of New Zealand were treated to more than 200 new releases in German"
• 2011 - Iceland: "German-language publishers released 230 new titles"
• 2010: "the year of Argentina's Guest-of-Honour focus at FBF, 216 new titles were released in the German language alone"

       I'm sure German publishers are already scurrying for Indonesian titles, but presumably local help would ... help. The Lontar Foundation has long led the way re. translations into English, but I think a bigger, more concerted effort is (urgently) needed.
       I hope it works out, eventually -- recall that the only US-publisher release of an Indonesian title last year seems to have been The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata, FSG basically just recycling a translation that had already been available (albeit pretty much only in South-East Asia) for years.