For many centuries in the Malay world active and questioning use has been made of Arabic, Chinese, Indian and European source texts of all kinds. They were translated into Malay as well as into regional languages. This article outlines indigenous translation activities and colonial translation policy during the 19th and 20th centuries as they affected Malay literature. With the growing interference of the European colonial power in the educational sector and text production, the situation and tactics of the translators – among them Eurasians, Chinese, Sino-Malay, Arabs, Malay and Javanese – could not but change. Influenced also by their differing ethnic backgrounds, these translators developed diverse strategies, revealing divergent and sometimes contradictory notions of translation, translation history, and 'ownership of the word'. This paper depicts the momentum that these concepts and strategies created in the Malay world.