Interview with Uri Bruck

 

The following is an interview with Uri Bruck, who just stepped down as the chair of the Israel Translation Association. His perspective is different and may be relevant to all translators, especially in regards to technology and translators.

 

[cup of tea on books&]

First, thanks for inviting me to do this interview. Having mulled over these questions a bit, I made myself a nice, fresh, hot cup of tea and sat down to answer them

 

1.       You have a wide variety of skills not limited to translation. What is your background?

 

There is some background information, and a few links here: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99_%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A7

 

I can expand on that a bit. I was born in Haifa, Israel. I spend some of my formative years in English speaking countries. After my military service I went to study in the Technion in the applied math faculty and eventually earned a BSc. That discipline also included some comp sci courses. That was also the time I started translating, at that time mostly for other students. After graduating, I got my first job at Actcom, the first commercial ISP in Israel. I bean inn tech support, advanced to a programmer and eventually became head of software dept. At Actcom, I also took on some documentation roles, both internal and external. This documentation included installation instructions, solving common problems and the company’s support site.

Actcom supported the open-source community in Israel and open-source tools.

During that same period, I continued doing small translation job and also participated in some of the online translator communities. At that time, it was mostly mailing lists. Then Dr. Hannah Amit-Kochavi came across one of my translations about an art exhibition and suggested that I might enjoy studying translation. I enrolled in the Beit Berl translation program. My then employers at Actcom were very supportive and accommodating.

Translation studies marked for me the difference between being someone who translated and being a translator.

I continued developing in both translation and programming. I became a freelancer, both as a translator and as programmer, and continued developing my skills in both. I added more tech skills and roles over time.  I worked in a few startups along the way. Including as  dev lead, or CTO, which turns out this doesn’t stand for Chess and Tea Overlord. I’m rather fond of both.

After graduating the Beit Berl translation program, I joined the ITA or rather stormed into it. That was back in 2002.

I suppose both translation and the various tech jobs were natural paths for me. 

Of course, it’s not all work. Among my hobbies are photography and has been ever since my grandfather, who was also a translator, let me use his camera on holiday. I’m an amateur musician (I always add “amateur” because my sister is a professional musician who teachers, performs, and has produced and organized concerts and international festivals). A few years ago, I studied electro-acoustics, which combines technology and music. More recently I took up painting and drawing.

I’m also into board games, especially chess variants, both playing and designing.  I like learning something new every few years.

 

 

2.      In your 5 years as the head of Israel Translators Association (ITA), what do you consider to be your successes? What major challenges does the new chairperson face?

 

One of the issues many organizations have – any type of organizations  - is lack of communication between administrators and technology. Some organizations have technical communicators – people who learn to speak to both administrators and tech people. I leveraged my knowledge and experience of web technology to answer a question, one that is very significant to our on-going recruitment efforts. The question being “Why join the ITA?”. There are quite a few answers on the ITA site. One answer I gave was: because you’ll have the best bloody professional online profile, which can serve as a digital business card and as part of your overall web presence, all that at a fraction of the price if you were to do it yourself. Of course, there are lots of other reasons to join, including networking, conferences and CPD. But networking is somewhat abstract for lots of people. Good online visibility is something I can point at and say: “You’re getting this!”

 

Another thing I’m happy with is events and conferences. I promoted diversifying the kind of events and the type of content in conferences. I also ended up organizing conferences and managed to fill them up with good professional content. This was not something I originally planned on doing. In fact, if someone had told me five years ago that I’d be organizing conferences, I would have probably told them  that he is crazy, but it needed to be done. So, I went ahead and did it. The first second one I organized was just before the Covid lockdowns. Then we all had to adapt. We had to take the lectures and conferences online. One of the perks of organizing lectures and conferences is I get to pick the celebrity speakers. Actually, it’s the only perk. Moreover, following some of these events, we have been invited, as an organization, to participate in other translator organizations online/hybrid events and, more recently, in FIT projects.

 

I think I worked both on improving both technological and administrative infrastructure.

 

As for the challenges the new Chair will face – one big challenge is getting more translators to join the ITA, i.e., finding creative ways to get to more translators to join the ITA. We need to get more translators to see the ITA as the professional organization they want to be a part of. Also fostering cooperation with more organizations, both in Israel and abroad is important.

3.      What is your impression of the future of freelance translation?

It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. On the one hand, we’re living in a time where there seem lots of changes in both in the tools we use for translating and in the tools we use for communicating about ourselves. On the other hand, I still hear translators wary of CAT tools, which have been around for a long time, saying things such that’s only for technical stuff, with lots of repetitions.

On my very infrequent blog, I wrote about this https://bruck.translation.org.il/word-processor-not-a-translators-tool/  

 

One of the issues I have with translators and technology is that even the many translators that embrace technology don’t drive the technology advances but at best accept them. That’s still better than being dragged kicking and screaming. That’s really an issue I have not just with translation tech, but also with a lot of technology. Operating systems and application, including lots of online applications are still built more for the convenience of engineers than for the convenience of users. Users need to learn a lot of things that make no sense just to write simple documents. The systems we use are based on concepts that have been part of commercial systems for at least three decades. There have a lot of good ideas in HCI research but users are just content with nicer looking and faster implementations of half-baked ideas.

Following up on the above linked blog post, the next stage of CAT tools is domain specific CAT tools. e.g. - CAT tools specific for literary translators, or tools specifically for technical translators. If anyone is already on that, kudos to them. Still, the people  that should pushing for that, what specifically they need, are the translators specializing in those domains – the practitioners. They should be working with the developers. There might even be some overlap there.

           

 

I don’t have any insights about marketing, except for re-iterating that it’s all about communications  However, it’s possible to do everything right and still not get the results you want. While some translators will manage to get repeat business from direct clients, most will get all or most their work through agencies. So freelance translation will depend a lot on finding the good agencies, as well as  maintaining good working relationships with them. That also requires solid interpersonal and communications skills. AI tools have the potential to enhance our work and our CAT tools. That’s the proper way to use them, not as competition, but as better tools. Unfortunately, one of the current trends is to marginalize the translators and get them to do lots of MTPE. Those are not the better agencies. One of the next steps for AI in translation is likely to be measuring translation quality. Some QA is already automated. Some translators are not happy with agency reviewers today. For translators working mostly with agencies, the next challenge might be dealing with AI reviewers. AI reviewers might also be used to attempt to detect machine translation.

4.      In your view, what are the roles of translator associations in promoting the profession?

The most brilliant marketing person I ever met told me: There is no such thing as marketing – it’s all communications.
Promoting something is done by showing, not telling. For translators associations that means creating increasing visibility of both the associations and its members by showing that these are clever, skilled, interesting people. And they have interesting things to say about what they do. The more one hears people say something interesting about this profession and why they do it, the more one sees them as people and less as stereotypes. Consequently, you benefit them and their profession. Some of what translators do is very useful and often essential to other people. This can be done through media, such as blogs, podcasts, videos and social media posts. Show, don’t tell.

 

Furthermore, organization can promote their own members as presenters outside translator conferences and thus reach a larger audience. This reflects well both on the individual members and the organization. Highlight the everyday benefits of translation and interpretation.

5.      What did you personally gain from your experience as head of the ITA?

 

It’s a position that gets exposure. I’m not very good at networking. That’s one of the reasons I started lecturing at conferences. When you’re the one presenting, then people come to you to talk to you. They already sort of know a bit about you. You receive the benefits of networking, but you don’t need to initiate as much. Of course, you can take it from there. As the ITA Chair, I got a lot more exposure. To organize a successful conference, and cooperation I did need to initiate a lot more contacts, but it’s easier when there’s a title to go with it. With exposure, one gains new contacts.

 

I have significant project management experience and some middle management experience. I’m also told that I’m pretty good at organizing a vacation. However, as I wrote in my reply to (2), organizing conferences was new to me - at least it was five years ago. I think I managed to leverage my organizational skills and  put together several conferences with quality content while keeping the costs relatively low even for the pre-Covid in-person conferences and the more recent hybrid events. The conferences, even when drawing initially on what I’ve seen previously as a participant and later on my own growing experience, were all different. Constraints encouraged us to be creative. Keeping costs was one constraint. Then Covid came and brought a whole new set of constraints and some interesting opportunities as well. Now everyone is doing hybrid conferences and online events. I also learned that one really shouldn’t be both the organizer and the tech support for an event, let alone an entire conference.

My work on the ITA site, the accompanying mobile app and other extensions of the ITA’s online presence were based in part on my experience in project management. I also described it above as partly a technical communicator job, but, since I was one of the administrators to communicate with, in practice I also filled the role of Product Manager. While this was not my job description in any previous job, I believe I did well. So, I learned that I can do that as well. Another line for the resume.

I learned a lot about the inner workings of a non-profit organization in Israel. It expanded my knowledge that I didn’t need previously as a freelancer but might some in useful in the future in some other job or role.

 

PS

I ended up writing this in two sessions, each with a cup of tea. The tea for the first season was the mix inspired by Sir Patrick Stewart – half Earl Grey, half English Breakfast. It sounded odd when I first heard of it, but once I’ve tried it, it became one of my favored choices. For the second session, I made the classic Wissotzky. It’s often perceived as more common, but I think it’s underrated. It’s a comfortable choice.

Thank you for the questions. It was certainly interesting to dive into them. I hope you find this useful or, at least, interesting.

 

 

 

 

* Picture captions help the blind fully utilize the Internet.

Picture credit