Dia melihat menara dari jalan.

Dia can mean either he or she. Malay third-person pronouns usually do not show gender.

So:

• Dia melihat menara dari jalan. = He saw the tower from the road or She saw the tower from the road

You need context to know whether the person is male or female.

Malay does not use articles like a/an and the the way English does.

So:

• menara can mean a tower or the tower
• jalan can mean a road, the road, street, or way, depending on context

Malay often leaves definiteness unstated unless something else in the sentence makes it clear.

Yes, this sentence uses a very familiar Subject–Verb–Object order:

• Dia = subject
• melihat = verb
• menara = object
• dari jalan = prepositional phrase

So it works like:

• She saw the tower from the road

That makes this sentence quite straightforward for English speakers.

Melihat means to see or to look at.

In many contexts, it is a fairly neutral or slightly more formal word for see. In everyday spoken Malay, learners will also often hear nampak.

Very roughly:

• melihat = see/look at
• nampak = see/be visible/can see

In this sentence, melihat focuses on the act of seeing the tower.

Lihat is the root word.
meN- is a common verb-forming prefix in Malay, and with lihat, it becomes melihat.

So:

• lihat = root
• melihat = active verb, to see / saw / sees

In careful standard Malay, melihat is the normal full verb form. In casual speech, people may sometimes say lihat by itself.

Dari jalan literally means from the road.

Here it tells you the viewpoint or starting place of the seeing:

• the person saw the tower from the road
• in other words, they were on/by the road when they saw it

Depending on context, English might sometimes translate this more naturally as:

• from the road
• while on the road
• from the street

But the basic idea is location/source: dari = from.

Yes. Jalan is a very common word with several related meanings.

It can mean:

• road
• street
• way
• path

In other contexts, jalan can also be a verb meaning to walk / to go / to function, but here it is clearly a noun because it comes after dari.

So in this sentence, jalan is best understood as road or street.

Not by itself. Malay verbs do not usually change form for tense the way English verbs do.

So melihat can mean:

• sees
• saw
• is seeing

The time is usually understood from context or from time words such as:

• semalam = yesterday
• tadi = earlier
• sekarang = now
• esok = tomorrow

So this sentence could mean He/She saw the tower from the road if the context is past, but the verb form itself does not mark past tense.

Yes, it is grammatical and understandable. But melihat can sound a bit more neutral or slightly more formal than very casual everyday speech.

In conversation, many speakers might also say:

• Dia nampak menara dari jalan.

That version can sound more natural in casual spoken Malay, depending on context. Still, dia melihat menara dari jalan is perfectly fine, especially in written or standard Malay.

Sometimes, yes, if the context already makes it obvious who the person is.

Malay often allows pronouns to be omitted when they are understood. For example, in conversation, someone might simply say:

• Melihat menara dari jalan.

But on its own, that is less complete and depends heavily on context. For a clear standalone sentence, keeping dia is better.

A little, but the most natural reading is that it describes where the person saw it from.

So the usual interpretation is:

• Dia melihat menara [dari jalan].
• He/She saw the tower from the road.

In other words, dari jalan modifies the whole action of seeing.

If you wanted to describe a tower specifically associated with a road, Malay would usually phrase that more clearly in another way.

Not literally. Dari means from, not on.

If you want to say on the road, Malay would more naturally use:

• di jalan = on the road / on the street

So there is an important difference:

• dari jalan = from the road
• di jalan = on the road

In this sentence, dari jalan suggests the road is the viewpoint or source location from which the tower was seen.