Pagi ini, kami pergi ke balai polis untuk cerita tentang orang yang mahu curi motosikal itu.

Pagi ini means this morning and acts as a time expression. In Malay, time phrases very often come at the beginning of the sentence to set the scene.

So:

• Pagi ini, kami pergi... = This morning, we went...

You could also put the time later, but starting with it is very natural.

Malay has two common words for we:

• kami = we, but not including the person you are speaking to
• kita = we, including the person you are speaking to

So in this sentence, kami means the speakers went to the police station, but the listener did not go with them.

That distinction is very important in Malay and often surprises English speakers, because English we does not make it clear.

Ke is a preposition meaning to when talking about movement toward a place.

• pergi ke sekolah = go to school
• pergi ke rumah = go home / go to the house
• pergi ke balai polis = go to the police station

So pergi ke is a very common combination.

Balai polis means police station.

• balai = hall, station, post, or office in certain set expressions
• polis = police

This is the normal Malay term for a police station.

Good question. Cerita is the root word meaning story or tell/story. In informal spoken Malay, speakers often use the bare root where more formal Malay would use a verb with a prefix.

So:

• untuk cerita tentang... = informal, conversational
• untuk bercerita tentang... = more standard as to talk/tell about...
• untuk menceritakan... = more transitive, to tell/narrate...

In very natural police-related Malay, people might even say:

• untuk membuat laporan tentang... = to make a report about...
• untuk melaporkan... = to report...

So the sentence is understandable, but cerita here sounds somewhat informal.

Tentang means about.

So:

• cerita tentang orang itu = tell/talk about that person

It introduces the topic of what was being talked about.

This is a noun followed by a relative clause.

Break it down like this:

• orang = person
• yang = who/that/which
• mahu curi = wants/wanted to steal
• motosikal itu = that motorcycle / the motorcycle

So:

• orang yang mahu curi motosikal itu = the person who wanted to steal that motorcycle

In Malay, yang is the usual word used to connect a noun to a description like who... or that....

Yes, in this sentence yang works a lot like English who in the person who wanted to steal...

Malay uses yang very broadly for relative clauses:

• orang yang datang = the person who came
• buku yang saya beli = the book that I bought
• rumah yang besar = the house that is big

Unlike English, Malay does not normally switch between who, which, and that. Very often, yang covers all of those roles.

This is another informal feature.

In standard Malay, you would usually expect:

• mahu mencuri = want to steal

But in everyday speech, especially casual speech, people often drop prefixes and use the root word:

• mahu curi

So:

• mahu curi = informal spoken style
• mahu mencuri = more standard/formal style

Both are understandable, but mencuri is the form you would more likely see in careful writing.

Mahu basically means want to or wish to. Because Malay does not mark tense the way English does, the exact time is often understood from context.

In this sentence:

• Pagi ini tells you the main event happened this morning
• mahu curi describes the person’s intention

So English may translate it as:

• wanted to steal
• was going to steal
• intended to steal

The best choice depends on context.

Itu usually means that, and it comes after the noun in Malay.

So:

• motosikal itu = that motorcycle

But in real usage, itu can sometimes also make something sound definite, a bit like the, especially when the thing is already known in the conversation.

So depending on context, motosikal itu may feel like:

• that motorcycle
• or the motorcycle in question

Malay does not usually change the verb for past, present, or future the way English does.

Instead, Malay often relies on:

• time words, like pagi ini
• context
• extra markers such as sudah, telah, akan, and so on

Here, Pagi ini tells you when it happened, so you understand kami pergi as we went.

Without context, pergi itself does not automatically mean past.

It is understandable, but it sounds a bit informal and slightly less polished because of cerita and curi being used without prefixes.

More standard versions would be:

• Pagi ini, kami pergi ke balai polis untuk bercerita tentang orang yang mahu mencuri motosikal itu.
• Pagi ini, kami pergi ke balai polis untuk melaporkan orang yang mahu mencuri motosikal itu.
• Pagi ini, kami pergi ke balai polis untuk membuat laporan tentang orang yang mahu mencuri motosikal itu.

The last two are especially natural if the idea is reporting the incident to the police rather than simply talking about it.