KUALA LUMPUR, June 11 — Malaysia’s subsidiary of the much renowned Oxford University Press (OUP), Oxford Fajar, celebrated its 60th anniversary yesterday, in line with our 60th Independence Day celebration in August.
Since the publishing agency’s formation in 1957, it has actively participated and contributed in the building of the nation’s education system, in addition to being a helpful aid to both students and teachers.
At its official birthday celebration on Thursday, Oxford Fajar shared some initiatives it had taken this year, which included the Oxford Big Write event.
Oxford Fajar’s managing director Sharmini Nagulan gave a short presentation on the evolution of the company through the years.
“OUP set up its office in Kuala Lumpur, which was its first in East Asia in 1957 in the Loke Yew building. In the early years, books were imported from the OUP United Kingdom for resale within the country.
“The first book published by the Malaysian branch that year was The Crocodile Dies Twice.
“It was then translated into Malay the following year with the title Buaya Mati Dua Kali,” said Sharmini.
Over the next two decades, OUP Malaysia focused on its local publishing list.
Local publishing arm Penerbit Fajar Bakti was introduced to spearhead Bahasa Malaysia publications, which supported the switch of the medium of instruction in school textbooks from English to Malay.
Rebranded as Oxford Fajar in 2006 to reinforce its relationship with OUP, it became the first company to publish higher education books catering to local syllabuses.
Also present at the event was OUP’s managing director for the Asia education sector Adrian Mellor, who said Malaysia remains a key market for Oxford, and that he was confident Kuala Lumpur could be further developed as a centre of regional development.
He talked about the challenges of publishing in Malaysia and how things are always changing, with the aforementioned medium of instructions being one of them.
“The implementation of digital elements in education is now becoming more important and we need to think how it would work from an educators’ perspective.
“The core educational basics are the same, but we need to navigate our students differently if we’re using digital methods,” said Mellor.
Sharmini and Mellor presented prizes to winners of the Oxford Big Write creative writing competition, themed Journeys.
The winners received RM2,000 each and a stack of Oxford Fajar books piled up to their respective heights.
The grand prize winner for Category A (aged between 15 and 17) was Ku Jia Sien from Chung Ling Private High School, Penang with her winning entry The Surreal Journey, while Nur Fatin Afrina Mohd Fakhruddin from Kolej Islam Sultan Alam Shah bagged the grand prize for category B (aged 18 and 19) with her story Sev & the Hot Chocolate.
