Career / Experience

Wot Cross Cultural Synergy was established in January 1995 by Suzan Piper and partner Muhammad Djohansyah, on their return from a ten year stay living and working in Jakarta where Suzan was employed in World Bank training projects with various Indonesian government departments (including BPPT and Public Works) and her partner worked as a professional musician and actor.

Suzan is a graduate of Indonesian studies at the University of Sydney and Monash University. She currently teaches Indonesian language and cultural studies at the University of NSW and Charles Sturt University.

Wot's aims are to provide services and strategies to promote arts, business and cultural links between Australia and Indonesia.A regular component of the business is translation and interpreting to and from Indonesian across various fields (educational, legal, social welfare, political and cultural) for Australian government, corporate and private clients, including the Australian Commonwealth Government Political Exchange Council (interpreting for visits by the KNPI), the Refugee Review Tribunal, SBS News and ABC current affairs programs. Other work includes pre-departure expatriate business briefings and hosting of overseas visits for university research institutes, state and national government bodies and departments, the corporate and arts sectors.

Suzan's literary translations include:
* an anthology of the poetry of Rendra for Lontar Press, Jakarta (in process);
* Rendra's poetry, Poem of Those Inflamed,Between the Pillars published in Meanjin, 57:3, 1998, and seven poems collected under Sastrawan Indonesia (Indonesian Writer), Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa, Dept. Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Indonesia, 1996;
* Seno Gumira Ajidarma's collection of short stories Eyewitness, (Imprint Press, 1995), winner of 1997 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - SBS Dinny O'Hearn Prize for Literary Translation.

She also wrote and translated a series of curriculum training documents for the Indonesian Government Department of Public Works in Jakarta. Recent translating for documentaries includes Ruth Balint's Troubled Waters (2001) on East Indonesian fishermen transgressing borders and John Pilger's The New Rulers of the World (2001) film on multinational exploitation of workers.