Selesema Babi

"Selesema babi" or also popularly translated as Swine flu in Malaysia, is making headlines lately resulting from several deaths in Mexico.

The last similar outbreak that we had in this region was bird flu/Avian flu.

I'm not going to write about what caused the disease or how to prevent it etc. You can find it in abundant on the net.

What intrigued me was the selection of the name for the disease. Here in Malaysia, pork/pig is translated to "babi". Babi is also use as a swearing word here. eg: "Babi la ko" which can bore similar meaning such as "f**k you". Which I think, prompted the popular use of the word "Khinzir" in the 90's , which is, of course, literally the same as Babi.

Surprisingly, the English news here choose to called it as Swine flu. Why not Pig flu (by the way, there're countries that called it Pig Flu and Swine does mean pig/hog/boar) ? My point here is that, who in Malaysia decides to collectively call it as Swine Flu (not pig flu) and "Selesema Babi (not "Selesema Khinzir").

Yeah I know it's really trivial thing. What can I do? It's those sleepless night again. Haha. Sigh.