Yaraku-Jin (やらく人),” a series that unravels Yaraku and Yaraku Translate by focusing on the “people” surrounding the company — including our team, our users, and our partners. In this edition, we introduce Yusuke Hiraoka, who is currently thriving in app planning after gaining experience across various teams and roles.

Please tell us about yourself!

I’m from Osaka, and I still live there. I joined Yaraku in 2020, and became a full-time employee around February 2024. I belong to the customer success team, but my main job now is app planning, where we think up new features for Yaraku Translate, conduct user interviews, and so on.

How He Met Yaraku

What kind of work did you do before joining Yaraku?

After finishing my master’s degree in translation studies, I worked as a freelance translator and reviewer. I also have experience in project management within corporate localization teams.

Presenting his research during his PhD.

Could you tell us your career paths at Yaraku?

At first, I assisted the NLP team on a part-time basis. While I was in my PhD program, I took on the management of translation services. And when I decided to take a leave of absence from my studies, I told Sakanishi-san (CEO) that I was looking for a full-time job. Things moved very quickly from there, and I joined the Customer Success team as a full-time employee. Currently, my main focus is app planning.

Were there any other reasons, besides scheduling, that made you want to commit to Yaraku?

Maybe one of the reasons is that CAT tools that mainly rely on machine translation aren’t very common, and I also like the product’s concept and simplicity. I believe making it easy and accessible for everyone is one of the most important things. Broadly speaking, I feel like it’s contributing to the “democratization of translation.” By “democratization,” I mean making translation so widespread that anyone can use it as part of the infrastructure. I think Yaraku Translate is an app that makes it possible.

App Planning: Shaping Yaraku’s Future —With a Focus on “Simplicity”

What do you actually do in app planning?

Right now, I’m working on UX research. It’s not something as rigorous as you would do in academic research, but I conduct user interviews and study the technical side on my own. I do think it takes a while to truly understand the technical side of web apps, but learning it is pretty fun. Nowadays, you can easily learn with generative AI and stuff too. I like studying when it’s something I’m interested in. It’s fun when you can do more things.

What do you keep in mind when planning?

Ideally, I’d like to think not just about what kinds of translation apps we should create, but also, even on a philosophical level, about what kind of role translation might play in the future. UX research is kind of a part of that, I would say.

And more broadly, do you have any guiding principles in your work?

Well… hmm, that’s a tough one. I guess simplicity is something I really value. Even if you think about things in a complicated way, people won’t really get it in the end. I guess the right answer often ends up being simple. When I was doing research, I tended to overcomplicate things, and then my mind got all tangled up, which made it hard for me to move things forward. I guess I always try to keep things simple, because things often get complicated.

Five Years at Yaraku — A Journey and the Openness Behind It

After all five years with the company, how do you see Yaraku now?

I’ve only been closely involved since I became a full-time employee about two years ago, but I feel like things have settled down now, after a period when a lot of people left. As we scale, I understand that the rules and regulations will probably become stricter, but I really hope our culture, including having the option to work fully remotely and embracing diversity, will stay the same. I wonder which listed company could be our role model.

―Or it would be great if Yaraku could become a role model itself and create an environment where more companies are inspired to follow our example.

Definitely. It would be amazing if we could create an environment where everyone works fully remotely and the company can still keep growing. I’ve worked full remote at previous jobs, so I’ve never actually had the experience of going to an office, which probably makes me the next evolution of humans, haha. I sometimes envy people who commute by train though.

What kind of people would you like to work with at Yaraku?

I think “Be open” is quite important among Yaraku action values. It can be tricky if you’re like, “I only do this one thing”… I think it’s fine to refuse things when you should, but if you can clearly explain your reasons when you say no, I believe you can maintain good relationships and still get solid results. For example, I think it’s valid when experienced people use what they’ve learned to find the “right” answers. But I believe it’s even cooler when they also realize there’s still a lot they don’t know and have the openness to listen to others.

―Exactly! So, what are your plans for the future?

I really want to have a dog these days. My friend’s dog is super cute, and I dream about what it would be like to live with one.

―Great! And finally, any message you want to share with the world?

I’ll keep working hard every day to make the app better!