little miss contrary

On the contrary

My dog is friendly. On the contrary my neighbour's dog is aggressive.

This one does not translate directly from Indonesian. In fact the meaning changes dramatically!

🇮🇩

In English if you say on the contrary then you are contrasting 2 debatable claims:

  1. You believe that the first claim is FALSE.
  2. You modify the first claim to make it TRUE.
People think my dog is dangerous. On the contrary, he's a very sweet dog!

Here we move from the false claim:

..my dog is dangerous.

..to a true claim:

..my dog is very sweet. (i.e. NOT dangerous)

On the other hand(!), if you're comparing two claims and BOTH CLAIMS ARE ALREADY TRUE:

My dog is friendly. On the other hand, my neighbour's dog is aggressive.

For this kind of truthy contrast, many synonyms are available: in contrast, meanwhile, on the other hand, etc.