The Malay scholar, writer, and journalist called Zaba. Zaba began his career as a school teacher. He translated English authors from Shakespeare to contemporary writers when he was attached to the Malay Translation Bureau in 1924. Zaba was lecturer in Malay at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and obtained his BA degree from there (1953), when he was 58 years old. As a journalist, he wrote comments on public affairs for about half a century from 1917.