translator

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 4: Wow, This Is Me

In the fourth part of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis, we discussed her years living, working, and engaging in intensive Buddhist practice at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, punctuated by a return to Brazil.

Sarah: What was life like at the Nyingma Institute?

Charu: Karma yoga, which is what they practice there, is about hard work and working through your resistence to work. You watch yourself, your mind, your emotions. You watch time. Everything you do all day long is considered an opportunity for practice. I started each day with prostrations.

Charu at Nyingma Institute.

Charu at Nyingma Institute.

Sarah: Can you briefly explain prostrations—their purpose and how they are done?

Charu: A prostration is a devotional ritual that engages the body, mind, and spirit. You chant a mantra such as om mani padme hum, and hold an intention while you physically prostrate yourself. You can go all the way down so you’re lying face down on the floor and then come all the way back up to standing, or you can go halfway, or whatever is right for your body. I stopped doing them daily after I left the institute because sun salutations became my form of prostration—although lately I’ve been doing traditional prostrations for a few minutes at the end of my yoga practice on behalf of my mom, who’s been sick, and on behalf of the world.

But while I lived at the institute I did 108 prostrations each morning, focusing on body, breath, and spirit. During the day I worked for the institute’s printing press, Dharma Enterprises in Oakland. The press had a commercial branch and a sacred-books branch. The commercial branch, which had a regular paid staff, generated the funds that allowed the press to publish sacred books, which were labor intensive but not a money maker. After I’d been there a short time they put me in charge of the sacred books and gave me a staff of several people. I worked 13– to 14–hour days, inhaled toxic fumes from the printing press, lifted heavy boxes, got so many paper cuts. I gave my soul, and literally, my blood! Then I’d come home, have dinner—I always looked forward to the delicious vegetarian meals that were served—and then go to class. The instruction was focused on helping us deal with our relationship to work and all the emotional patterns that working such long hours can trigger. We’d study a particular topic—for example, time, space, and knowledge, or skillful means—for a week or so, and we’d apply the insights from the instruction to how we were doing our jobs. We also met individually with the teachers. They wanted to check in with us, see how we were developing, how we were dealing with the inevitable challenges of working that hard. In our studies we were dealing with a lot of big words and concepts in English, which was a language I was still learning. So in my limited time off, I focused with great intention on learning English, always paying attention to new words and looking them up in the dictionary, and asking my American friends to correct my speech. I was really hungry to learn this new language. It was like I turned off my Portuguese. I wanted to embrace my new life in the States, and English was the doorway.

Sarah: It sounds like the institute was getting a damn good deal.

Charu: They were.

Sarah: Is there anything about the experience that, looking back, you wish had been different?

Charu: No. I’d do it all again. I felt the whole experience was meant to strengthen me, and it did. It was too much for some people, and they left quickly. But it was one of the most powerful, transformative times of my life. I was depressed and insecure when I arrived, and I grew so much in my time there. And I got incredible feedback from my teachers. I thought, Wow, this is me, I’ve never seen myself like they’re describing me. I learned that I have an incredibly strong capacity to focus and deliver more than what is asked of me.

Don’t get me wrong—it was a very challenging experience for me on every level. I had to go through a lot of resistance—self-doubt, self-pity. One project at the institute involved building 108,000 padmasambava statues that were going to be placed at stuppas on a farm in Odiyan—a retreat center in Sonoma County that is not open to the general public. Sometimes after a long day at the printing press we’d be invited to help out with making the statues. In addition, I found a lot of the people in the community to be very shut down, compared to Brazilians, who are so expressive. I felt isolated and cried a lot. There were moments when I was on the verge of breakdown. Yet at the same time, I made wonderful friends. The Laotian immigrants who worked for the commercial side of the press were very warm. They laughed a lot  and brought delicious food to share with one another at lunchtime, and they would invite me to join in. They were a very loving community. I felt nourished by them; they reminded me of Brazilian culture in a way. I also learned that I could be myself when I met with the teachers one-on-one; I could share with them how challenging the experience was for me.

Charu with one of her teachers at Nyingma Institute.

Charu with one of her teachers at Nyingma Institute.

Overall, my time at the institute taught me how to express myself honestly and speak up for myself. After leaving Brazilian culture, where I had felt so stifled, coming to the States was a chance to discover myself fully.

And I thought Berkeley was the most beautiful, magical place. The institute is right next to the Greek Theater and the university campus. It was a totally different world than anything I’d ever experienced. In my time off from work, I would go to a café and have a cup of coffee and a pastry and then walk miles through campus and down the streets with their beautiful old houses. I knew where every public bathroom was because I would walk all day long. Brazilians will know exactly what I mean when I say I wasn’t used to this life at all.

Sarah: How long did you stay at the institute?

Charu: The first time I was there, I stayed for a year and a half, fulfilling the commitment I’d made. They wanted me to stay but I needed to be with my family again for a while, and I needed a break from the hard work, the loneliness, and the language barrier. It felt like I had been on a sabbatical and I needed to get back to the “real world.”

Sarah: Did you return to the secretarial job?

Charu: No. My family and friends thought I was crazy because most Brazilians would kill for that job. But I was not the same person I had been and I was not about to compromise the new discoveries I was making about myself. So I had no intention of going back to that job. I really needed time for integration.

Returning to Brazil was quite difficult. After that first period at the institute, during which I had worked so hard, I had held the illusion that in Brazil I would have more fun, have boyfriends, go out dancing, all of which I craved at that point. But those three years back in Brazil did not turn out like I had pictured. I was very depressed. I felt I did not belong there any longer. I was a fish out of water. Quite a strange time.

Then, after three years or so, the institute invited me back. I saw that things weren’t working out for me in Brazil, and I knew that if I went back to the institute I could make it work for myself. So I said yes. This time I structured it differently—I made it clear that I wanted to focus on making sacred books and on my studies, and not on commercial printing, although I did still help out with that sometimes.

Sarah: How long did you stay that second time?

Charu: I stayed almost two years. Then I decided it was time for me to move on. I felt that if I didn’t leave at that point, I never would.

Sarah: Why do you say that?

Charu: Because you have all your needs met there—room, board, education, friends, community, and a tiny stipend. But that’s not the life I wanted for myself. I was appreciative and grateful but I needed to venture out. The institute staff were very upset when I announced my plans—they really appreciated my skills and my devotion. But I stuck to my decision.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 5: Yoga Is My Second Child

Managing to Build Bridges - Part 8: Do We Want to Be Right in a Dictionary Sense?

Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. In Part 8, Nani reflects on the goals and challenges of translation and the ups and downs of working abroad.

Sarah: Is “linguist” a fancy name for “translator”?

Nani: Yup. My primary role was to translate and localize content into Indonesian in preparation for the launch of the Indonesian version of LinkedIn. It’s very interesting work to me because it requires awareness of contextual issues. For example, let’s say we want to point a user to the home page. You can’t use the Indonesian word for “home, ” or “rumah,” because that literally means “house.” I decided to use “halaman utama,” which means “primary page.”

Sarah: Tell me about the challenges involved in translation work of that type.

Nani: One challenge was that by the time I got the job at LinkedIn, I’d lived in the States for a long time. I still spoke ‘90s Indonesian. As I grappled with that challenge, lot of things I’d learned in my linguistics courses as an undergrad became real to me. Because of that training, I remembered to step back and ask myself: What is our objective with this translation? What factors should be considered in arriving at the best translation? Indonesian is much more fluid than English. There are often two or more ways to spell one word. There’s the official listing in the government-sponsored dictionary, but that’s different from the spelling people use in daily life. Besides spelling, there are all sorts of issues such as degree of formality and influences of regional languages in Indonesia—for example if you’re addressing elders versus younger people; ways of speaking between people in big cities versus not; and of course the nuances of language on more than 17,000 islands that are part of Indonesia. Even if you try to come up with the lowest common denominator for a particular term, it still won’t necessarily do the work you need it to do.

I tried to fold all these nuances into my translation work. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m seen by the Indonesian translation community as a hard person to work with, because I often challenged the external translators I was managing.

I once applied for a position at a different tech company, and part of the application process was to take a test, translating English into Indonesian. Surprisingly, I did not do well. But because the company I applied for had a policy of transparency, the hiring manager told me how the test was evaluated. It turned out the reviewer was evaluating my work based on what’s officially correct in Indonesian language, but not necessarily how people speak day-to-day. I illustrated this point by running a Google search for the two terms. The one I chose yielded hundreds of thousands of results, while the one the evaluator considered correct only yielded about 20. This showed not only that spelling in Indonesian language is fluid, but also that the way everyday people spell Indonesian words may not be the same as how those words appear in the dictionary.

As a translator, I think it’s important to ask, Do we want to be right in a dictionary sense, or do we want the most engagement from the people we are trying to reach?

At an art exhibit in Stockholm.

At an art exhibit in Stockholm.

Sarah: In spite of the fact that you considered going to another tech company, you’ve stayed at LinkedIn.

Nani: Yes. I feel that LinkedIn has always supported my professional development and they’re open to my ideas. For example, when I’m ready for a new challenge, I’m given one. I told my previous manager that I was interested in being promoted, and he suggested that I take on a new project. I ended up working with the research team to conduct qualitative research in Indonesia. I also led an international research project in which my team members interviewed members from different parts of the world. It was great because I was able to use research skills I’d learned in anthropology—gathering ethnographic data through one-on-one interviews, doing archival research, creating reports. Because of that work, as well as my collaboration with a cross-functional team, Customer Operations, I was promoted to a senior position. After working with Customer Operations for a couple of years, I also started working with a new team, Marketing. Not long after that, I became a Marketing Localization Program Manager. As a program manager, I streamline processes to help improve communications and operations among multiple teams in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Sarah: That’s a consistent theme in your career trajectory. You love streamlining operations in organizations.

Nani: LinkedIn has given me the green light to make those kinds of improvements. I’ve worked there for more than seven years now and I attribute my longevity to that. I feel valued. I’m also grateful that the company has sent me to Dublin for an assignment; I had always wanted to experience living in Europe.

With colleagues in Dublin.

With colleagues in Dublin.

Sarah: What’s it like to live in Dublin?

Nani: It was difficult at first. I felt overwhelmed by the foreignness, the short days and cold rainy weather, the loneliness. It triggered memories of being 17 and having just moved to the U.S. I remember after a few weeks of being in San Francisco, I broke down in my brother’s kitchen, taking in the fact that I was now in a new place, with no friends, where even communicating was a challenge.

What I’ve realized is that loneliness follows you, no matter where you are. For better or worse, I’ve often experienced loneliness, ever since I was a child. It’s not the kind of loneliness where you feel you have no one to spend time with. It’s more a feeling of alone in the world—what a friend of mine calls “existential loneliness.” Perhaps I thought if I moved away, I would lose this feeling. It turns out it’s still there, but with newer, different distractions. I’m feeling more at peace and accepting of this fact over time.

With colleagues in Sunnyvale.

With colleagues in Sunnyvale.

What I love about living in Europe is the ability to travel to other countries—both the planning and the experience of traveling. Since I arrived in December, I’ve been to eight countries in Europe, including countries I’d never been to before that I’d always been curious about, like Hungary, Austria, and Denmark. I’ve learned more about myself and what kind of traveler I am.

Being based in Dublin has its own challenges in terms of my job. For example, time zone differences between the U.S. and Ireland affect my work hours, which means I sometimes work until 7, 8, even 10 at night. On the positive side, if I plan ahead, my schedule is more flexible. For instance, when I know I’ll need to work late, I do other things in the morning. I once spent a weekday morning swimming in an outdoor pool in Vienna—that was lovely.

With friend Marina in Dublin.

With friend Marina in Dublin.

What I continue to love the most about life, no matter where I am, are those rare moments that give me feelings of gratitude and contentment. A few weeks ago, on a Friday, I attended a company party at an outdoor park. It was almost eight in the evening, but it was still bright, and the air was balmy, very rare for Dublin. I was on my way home, walking to the train station, but changed my mind and decided to walk home, even though Google Maps said it would take an hour. I strolled through Sandymount, a coastal suburb in Dublin, surrounded by elegant houses with shiny windows and beautiful front gardens. I didn’t have any obligations waiting at home; there was nothing I needed to do except enjoy the moment.

Managing to Build Bridges - Part 3: I Felt Pretty Stupid

Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. In Part 3 of our conversation, Nani describes her initial encounter with U.S. culture and her nascent passion for exercising her analytical skills.

Sarah: What were your first impressions of US culture?

Nani: I was reading an old diary recently and I found observations about exactly that. For instance, I noted that people say “How are you” a lot but, as I learned the hard way, you’re not supposed to pause and really think about how you are—you’re supposed to just say, “Fine.” We don’t say “How are you” in Indonesia so at first I thought people really wanted to know how I was.

I also felt uncomfortable physically. In Southeast Asia, females are supposed to behave in a feminine way, and whiter skin is prized. I’d flunked that test because I wasn’t very feminine and was darker-skinned. Here in the US I had to wrestle with a new projection—I was seen by many as exotic. A lot of people—mostly but not only white men—assumed I’d fit the stereotype they had of Asian women as submissive, weak, nurturing. So I’d gone from feeling unattractive to attractive, but attractive in a way that made me feel objectified, uncomfortable. It took me a long time to develop the vocabulary to understand all that.

On an intellectual level I felt pretty stupid. I remember I went with American friends to see a film and one of them asked me afterward, Well, what do you think? Did you like it? I said, Yes, it was cool. The friend said, Why? I had no idea. My critical thinking skills were still very limited. Under Suharto, critical thinking was suppressed in both the public and private educational systems. You were not allowed to think for yourself. That’s why literature wasn’t offered in schools—literature promotes deeper questioning. Before I moved to the States I had never even heard of the most internationally renowned Indonesian author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. His books were all banned in my time. After I got to the US I sought out Indonesian literature.

Acclaimed Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Acclaimed Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Sarah: What did you major in at SF State?

Nani: At first I declared marketing as my major. I was still enacting the values of my parents and the world I grew up in. After one or two classes I said, this is so boring, I’m not going to do it. But I didn’t know what to replace it with. I had the same old frustration I’d felt in Indonesia—“I don’t know what my skills are; I don’t know what I’m good at.” I went back and looked at my performance at the American Language Institute. I’d excelled in writing and literature. I thought, maybe that’s what I should go for. I ended up double majoring in English literature and linguistics.

After that, I was able to say why I like or don’t like certain movies! I definitely struggled in the lit classes. But I was dating an American at the time. In terms of our communication as a couple a lot was lost in translation, but being with him propelled the speed of my learning. He would help me even with literature stuff, for example if I didn’t understand something I read or when I had to write papers.

Sarah: Why did you want to study linguistics?

Nani: I knew that breaking down the English language—looking at aspects like phonology, morphology, social linguistics—would significantly speed up the process of gaining mastery, which I very much wanted.

All of a sudden I became a proper student. It just proves that if you’re passionate about whatever it is you’re doing, no one even needs to tell you to be disciplined. You just do whatever it takes, providing you have access to the basics (housing, food, etc.), which I did, thankfully. I often went to my professors’ office hours. I would show up with lists of questions I’d prepared in advance.

Next: Dessert Goes to a Different Stomach

Managing to Build Bridges - Part 2: Such a Bad Kid

Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. In Part 2 of our conversation, Nani describes how a car crash almost kept her from emigrating to the U.S.

Sarah: What led you to come to the States?

Nani: That choice was influenced by the fact that I had two siblings who were already living here. In 1985, when I was five, my brother, who’s 14 years older than I, left to attend college in Connecticut. My sister moved to the US in 1992, also to go to school.

Anyway, fast forward to my teenage years. I wasn’t happy, wasn’t finding my niche. I was such a bad kid, very rebellious.

Junior high.

Junior high.

Junior high. Nani is in the second row up, far right.

Junior high. Nani is in the second row up, far right.

Sarah: What did “bad” and “rebellious” look like?

Nani: I tried smoking several times—I didn’t even like it but I wanted to be cool. I was skipping school—not a lot, not even every month, but it was a lot by the standards of my milieu. My biggest form of acting out was coming home at night later than the agreed-upon time. I remember coming home at 10:30 or 11 and my dad would be waiting outside, very angry, ready to hit me.

At that time in Indonesia, and maybe even to this day, domestic violence was considered a normal part of family life. Husbands hit wives; mothers and fathers hit their children. Not all families were like this, but my family was, and I knew many peers whose families were the same. I forgave my parents for their part in all that a long time ago. Life is complicated and I believe they did their best in the only ways that they knew.

High school.

High school.

High school production of “Indiana Jono” (spinoff of “Indiana Jones”).

High school production of “Indiana Jono” (spinoff of “Indiana Jones”).

Sarah: How old were you when you came to the States?

Nani: Seventeen, after I graduated from high school. My brother who was already living in San Francisco advocated for me to attend university here. My dad later told me more recently that his response to my brother’s suggestion was, Well, this kid is not doing well here; if we send her abroad, she’ll either continue on that path or thrive. They both took a chance on me.

Sarah: What was your mother’s opinion?

Nani: In the back of her mind she was probably thinking, How could Nani ever thrive in a whole new country? Just before I was supposed to come to the US I crashed my parents’ shiny new car, which I’d driven without a license. My mom said, I don’t think we should let her go. I was desperate to leave and I really thought I’d sabotaged the whole thing at that point.

Besides the car crash were other factors that could have kept me in Indonesia. At that time, in 1998, the Indonesian economy was in terrible shape and there were lots of protests. The president stepped down; the US embassy closed. The dollar was three to four times higher than it had been, so studying in the US became way more expensive. I had friends who decided not to go because of that. But my brother had a good job and was prepared to pay for my tuition, have me live with him, give me pocket money.

Sarah: You ended up attending San Francisco State University. Were you already accepted there before you left home?

Nani: No. All I had was an acceptance letter to an intensive eight-week summer language school at the university called the American Language Institute. My visa was only valid for that period, so I could have been asked to go back to Indonesia. But I took the TOEFL at the end of the eight weeks and applied to the university. I met the criteria and was accepted.

Next: I Felt Pretty Stupid

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Managing to Build Bridges - Part 1: The Pressure to Be a Certain Type of Girl

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Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. This is the first in an eight-part interview I conducted with Nani.

Sarah: What’s your current position?

Nani: Currently I manage localization marketing projects for LinkedIn— primarily for the European and Latin American markets.

Sarah: Can you explain what that entails?

Nani: My team, the localization team, partners with marketers in various business units to localize their marketing content and campaigns. That means we translate and localize marketing communications into local languages. Localization requires sensitivity not just to language but also to cultural factors.

Volunteering at MEDA-Cropped.png

Sarah: Help me understand the nuts and bolts of what you do.

Nani: My job comprises two major elements: active project management and relationship building. On the project management front, I make sure all the localized content is delivered on time—I build timelines, coordinate with marketing partners and vendors and manage tickets for all the projects in progress as well as our backlog.

The other part of my work is to drive strategy and plan with our partners. Localization is often thought of at the end of a marketing project, but really it should be planned for up front. Most of the content creators are based in the US and are still accustomed to thinking in terms of a US audience. But once a marketing piece—let’s say, an e-book with a really nice, polished design—has been produced in English, it’s challenging to go back in at that point and figure out how to create a parallel version in German. If the content creators are planning for localization from the beginning, it’s a lot easier.

So I engage with them early in the process and say, OK, it’s going to be hard to localize this image of San Francisco during the World Series for other markets, because it’s so specific to the San Francisco Bay Area. Or, this quote by Tori Amos might not be relevant to people in Germany or Spain. I’ll suggest they find a more globally relevant example. I’m not the final decision maker, and some teams are more receptive to feedback and changes than others. But I work hard to build relationships and stay engaged with our partners, especially the content creators.

Sarah: I’ve known you for most of your adult life, and you’ve explored a number of interests over the years. It hasn’t been a linear path. Yet looking back, it all seems to support what you’re doing currently. I see this conversation as a chance to trace your path with you. Let’s back way up. You grew up in Indonesia—where exactly?

In West Java, in Bandung, the third largest city in Indonesia.

Sixth birthday.

Sixth birthday.

Sarah: Were you thinking one day you’d move to the States?

Nani: As a child, I resisted a lot of the norms, customs, and rules around me. I couldn’t find anything to feel passionate about. I grew up in a community of Chinese Indonesians where people knew each other’s business and talk amongst themselves about the latest thing that so-and-so’s son or daughter has done.

Sarah: Were you insulated from non-Chinese Indonesians?

Nani: I went to the same school from kindergarten through high school—14 years—and about 90 percent of the students were Chinese Indonesians. I did have a couple native Indonesian friends. But as kids, we never explicitly addressed racial issues.

Seventh birthday.

Seventh birthday.

Sarah: Was there a sense in the Chinese Indonesian community of needing to stick to their own due to discrimination by the wider culture?

Nani: That’s a narrative that is real for many Chinese Indonesians. But I also think Chinese Indonesians tend to use that narrative in order to hold ourselves apart. The discrimination is real, it’s there—but sometimes, like many racial issues, the perception of discrimination is tied up with lack of openness to one another.

Maybe I was naïve, but it was very rare that I was directly discriminated against for being Chinese. That might be due in part to the fact that my skin color is darker than that of many Chinese Indonesians. Once a cousin of mine, who like me has darker skin, was out with her friends, who were all Chinese Indonesian. They were mugged by a native Indonesian. When he got to my cousin he stopped and said, I’m not going to do this to one of my own people.

Sarah: So it sounds like you didn’t feel like an outsider so much in terms of the larger culture, but you did feel that somehow you weren’t connecting. Can you tell me more about that?

Nani: I felt like I had to conform to what was expected of me, but I didn’t want to. I did very poorly in my first decade of school; I just wasn’t interested. The subjects emphasized in the Indonesian educational system are life sciences and math. I felt pressure from my parents to be like some of my cousins, who excelled in those subjects.

Eighth birthday.

Eighth birthday.

I also felt pressure from my peers and family to be a certain type of girl, very feminine and materialistic. People were wearing a lot of American brands—Guess, Esprit—they were eager to catch up with all these Western materialistic obsessions.

On the other hand, I loved watching and imitating English-language TV shows like Beverly Hills 90210 and a Canadian series called MacGyver, about a resourceful guy who gets himself out of crazy situations. The emotional language is so different—Indonesians don’t speak about their emotions the way people do in North America. I’d hang out by myself in my bedroom and practice talking like these characters, saying things like, “How do you feel?”

Next: Such a Bad Kid