New Professor Finds Localization the Perfect Combination of Language and Technology

Professor Bregman has joined the Institute’s localization faculty, sharing experience built over two decades at Silicon Valley companies like eBay and Rivian in courses on software localization and internationalization, as well as localization engineering.

Bregman grew up in the Netherlands, then studied and later lived in China, where he discovered the field of localization. He currently lives with his wife and two sons in Santa Cruz.

How did you develop your interest and expertise in languages and intercultural communication? 

I always had an interest and talent for both languages and science and more technical fields back in high school. I initially studied chemistry in college, but found it didn’t engage me, so I shifted to study Chinese language, history, and politics. I chose Chinese partially because it was difficult and I have always sought out challenges. It also intrigued me because, as a young child, I had a Chinese friend living down the block. When I went to his house, it was a completely different world. That always fascinated me: how we were living in the same kind of house, that looked identical on the outside, but was so different on the inside, something that remained with me over the years.

I’ve always had this interest in things like science and computers, and most of my free time in college I spent working on computers and programming, as well as doing freelance software development in assembly language, C, and Pascal, which was still relatively new in the 1980s.

Some time after I had graduated, a friend introduced me to a job opportunity at a Dutch translation company in Beijing, and that’s how I started working in localization, at the crossroads between language and computers, which I found was a very ideal professional track for me. 

I’ve also always loved traveling, seeing new places, and learning about different cultures. This interest further developed once I got a scholarship to study in Beijing for a year, during which time I was able to travel around the country and learn about it firsthand.

How did you come to join the faculty at the Institute? 

I first learned about the Institute through meeting its impressive graduates around the world. My wife worked on nonproliferation issues in the Netherlands, getting to know many Institute alumni. When we left China, we moved to California so she could complete her master’s degree in nonproliferation at MIIS.

In the meanwhile, as a localizer at eBay, I also had the pleasure of working with so many talented Institute graduates. Alumni not only made up most of our language team, but were also represented at many of the vendor companies we worked with.

When I heard about the opportunity to teach at the Institute, I was hopeful that I could really contribute in bridging the “language” gap between translators and software developers, educating translators on software technology, and software developers on human language requirements. It feels like I’m coming full circle. I’m really excited about being able to give back some of my experience to new generations of localizers.

You lived in Beijing for several years. How was that experience?

We lived in China at a time of rapid transformation—it changed so much just between 1990 to 2000 (and of course has continued to change in the decades since then). It had a profound impact on people’s psyches. That it was at the time of huge growth came with both positives and negatives.

After having moved to China in 1997, as I am also very interested in, let’s say, “alternative music,” as it’s called here, I found it easy to get excited about the burgeoning music scene, and again, serendipitously, got to meet and “hang” with many members of the music and art scene at the time.

While these were highlights, so to speak, what I miss most is just daily interactions with people, just simple conversations with people on the street, chatting with cab drivers, eating out at restaurants, traveling around the country by train or bus, taking walks or bike rides around country backsides where foreigners were not often seen yet.

What have been some of the most interesting or challenging localization projects you’ve worked on?

Localizers have to be creative and adaptable—we’re often handed complex projects with tight timelines and have to navigate changes to the scope throughout the process. I’ve worked to localize everything from the most well-known e-commerce website in many countries into many languages to car navigation interfaces in cutting-edge electric vehicles. The challenges keep the work interesting.

I was fortunate that eBay was a place where localization was well established as a discipline and the team was respected. We had worked hard to prove ourselves, and were respected as a result, enabling us to positively influence the globalization efforts of the company at large.  

What all these projects have in common is that they are interdisciplinary, so working with members of many other teams, all coming to the table with their own (team) perspectives, you have to get alignment for a project to be successful.

My personal favorite project was the design and implementation of a localization automation framework with a (very) small team of developers and engineers, that allowed us to streamline existing processes, execute more efficiently, providing “near-instantaneous” human-quality localization across dozens of development projects at any given time, and setting us up to more quickly and easily on-board new content formats for our internal clients.

Something I love about the localization field is that it is so international. I had teammates from Germany, France, Italy, China, Taiwan, Japan. It’s people with different backgrounds, but what they have in common is they’re all open-minded.

How do you see AI affecting the localization field? 

First of all, localization is ahead of the curve. We’ve been exploring, adopting, and leveraging machine translation (one of the main initial drivers for a new field of study of “machine learning” that evolved eventually into the current evolution of large language models, visual learning, and AI) for decades, and I believe we have a lot of insights to share about how to use technology, machine learning, and AI effectively.

What’s important for decision makers to understand is that you can’t use AI to just replace humans. I see AI as an augmenting technology. It has many benefits, but you can only get the most out of it when it’s designed to be used by people who are knowledgeable.

AI is a tool. I’m all for using technology to make our work faster and more efficient and to make it possible to localize into more languages and reach more people. These are all great things. But to get the best out of the technology and avoid pitfalls, we need people with deep technical and language knowledge who can inform and guide their companies in centering the ultimate goal of facilitating intercultural communication.

What advice would you have for somebody who’s looking to enter and thrive in the localization field? 

Something I love about the students I’ve met so far is their enthusiasm. Keep that enthusiasm! It’s a great field. In your career, there will be good times and bad times, but don’t be dissuaded.

I see students focusing a lot on the skills they need to build to get hired, but don’t forget to also think about what you’re looking for in an employer. If possible, try to find a place where you feel that localization is understood and respected.

What would you say to someone who feels intimidated by programming and the more technical aspects of localization? 

As they say: “How do you eat an elephant with a teaspoon? One bite at a time.” We model the courses to start simple. It’s understandable, so don’t be afraid of it.  Anybody can do it. You have great professors who will help you. 

Why is localization a good field to enter now?

Localization is about intercultural communication and enabling and facilitating that, and that’s only going to keep growing. It’s not not just about business or technology—it’s also about culture and language and understanding.  

Localization is changing and growing rapidly, so if you have a growth mindset, you like challenging yourself, and learning new things makes you excited, this is the field for you!