1966 Visibility, Part 3 - translation

Friday, August 22, 2008

In the late '80s I was in a design department. I owned all the externals - commands, messages, responses, return codes, everything that the user saw - for one of The Company's big iron operating systems. At that time, I wrote a guide to translation that was so well received that it became a part of The Company-wide operating system standards. (It's possible to write interfaces that cannot be translated.) The Company was expanding into other countries, and translation was important.

I didn't follow my own advice on that one. I don't think anyone in management was at all aware of the guide.

I noticed that many of the existing interfaces were not translatable. They needed to be rewritten. I couldn't do it, because my plate was full, so I went to a few people in the usability design departments, and asked if they could help. Several of them were enthusiastic and wanted to do it. So I met with them and their managers, to get permission for three of them (from three different departments) to work on it, and a fourth person from programming to make the code updates. I marked the externals that needed fixing, including what they should be changed to. While we were at it, it was a good time to fix grammar and punctuation, too, and I marked those up.

Some months later, the rewritten materials went to Japan for translation, and the Japanese translators were wildly enthusiastic about our externals.

Then, one day, there was a multi-department meeting of the design area. The umpty-high manager got up and talked about how happy the translators were with our externals, and announced that the people who'd done this "on their own" were getting awards. They each got a bunch of money, and a ticky in their personnel folders.

Yup, those four. Not me. Even though it was I who recognized the need, and identified all the externals needing improvement, and wrote what they should be changed to. That was more work than simply making the changes, which was essentially a clerical job.

I was stunned. The other four kept glancing at me and shrugging, like "don't blame me!"

To their credit, the four went to my manager, and pointed out that I should also have gotten an award, since I was the one who recognized the need, did all the design work, and negotiated the resources to accomplish it. It would never have happened without me.

A few days later, my manager called me into his office, alone, no witnesses, and handed me a steel ball point pen with "Outstanding Contribution" stamped on. He said that was the best he could do, and that I should keep it quiet, or people would think all they had to get an award was complain and drum up support.

That was like a slap. I was ready to ask for a transfer.

And then something worse happened which pretty much steeled my resolve to get out of there.
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