Richard H. Spencer

Translatability: Understandability and usability by others

Abstract The United States version of the English language, sometimes referred to as “Americanese” is a lively, still developing language. It is frequently interspersed with slang, acronyms, and abbreviations. In daily use, people often employ catch phrases from advertising, television, and “one-liners” voiced by entertainers and other public figures. While this may make for a colorful version of English (deplored by some), it causes untold problems for translators whenever the “colorful” or inconsistent variations creep into documents that must be translated for use in a world market. That language problem is a problem in usability, a human factors problem; not always recognized as such by the computer industry. Akin to the sometimes thoughtless use of idiomatic English, is the bland assumption that what is designed and developed for the U.S. market is satisfactory for other countries. This assumption ignores significant differences in form, format, economic and financial factors, as well as acculturation differences. These are some of the elements that contribute to difficulties experienced by U.S. companies in getting computer programs and other products accepted outside the United States. This article discusses these matters, and four basic steps for alleviating some of the problems.

Career Paths: Technical or Management?

The new engineer hired into a companys engineering organization can expect to enter at a low level and then work his/her way up through a progression of increasing levels of responsibility according to his/her ability and performance. Unless the graduate is one of those extremely rare individuals who has the drive, the in-depth knowledge, a very large bank account balance or sponsor, and a novel new concept to market, most will enter at the lowest level in the particular corporate defined engineering structure. Typical titles would be junior engineer or associate engineer.

Why Fear the Pen? [Essay]

In more than 50 years of combined industrial experience, we have noted that an overwhelming majority of engineers are almost paranoid about avoiding writing almost any kind of communication, especially informative articles for publishing in magazines (communication in this sense does not take into account blogs, e-mail, texting, or other forms of informal communications that seldom have any review process). While not having done any in-depth research on the subject, which might become an interesting thesis or dissertation topic, we believe that the problem can be attributed to one of four possible reasons.

Race, Religion, and Customs: Why They Are Important to You

In today?s business environment, working with employees and company divisions internationally is essentially what some of us tend to refer to as ?standard operations.? That is especially true when the word ?international? is a part of the company?s name. Such inclusion has a number of ramifications. The major ones encountered are language, race, religious restrictions, customs, laws, business regulations, and, perhaps most importantly, remembering to remain sensitive and use common courtesy in all of your international dealings.

It's OK To Ask

Years ago, in the heyday of the comic book super hero, the heroes were considered symbols of perfection. Comic book characters such as Superman, Captain Marvel, Batman and Robin, the Green Lantern, and others come to mind. In each case, secret powers, unimaginable strength, and always bringing his or her villainous adversary to a satisfactory end (or at least a termination to some scheme in which the villain hoped to successfully subjugate mankind in the immediate future) identified the super hero. The writers of these comics did allow their hero to have some minor flaw that could be exploited to cause harm to the good guy. As a case in point was Superman?s weakness when exposed to kryptonite (material from his home planet of Krypton).

B.S., M.S., or Ph.D.?

Actually, the question of which degree to pursue is not as simple as the title of this article implies. The decision as to any degree beyond high school depends on what the individual wants to do and his or her personal interests, as well as the requirements for the starting position in the new career and for future growth opportunities. It should be noted that there are literally hundreds of thousands of jobs available today with a large number not requiring a degree of any kind. In some cases, a high school education may be the only requirement, while in others, some type of specialized training is necessary. In most of the latter cases, the schooling is limited to a one- or two-year program. It should also be noted that the following comments are more applicable to the educational system in the United States and may vary considerably in non-U.S. educational systems. Given that, what then might drive an individual to pursue a bachelors, masters, or doctoral program?

Why Field Test

Generally speaking, we think of testing as a laboratory exercise, a carefully controlled process. However, many products cannot be thoroughly tested solely in the structured environment and process of a laboratory procedure-based evaluation. Certainly, most products require evaluation in the laboratory, at least for initial assessment and debugging. While many environments can be reasonably reproduced in the laboratory, there are environmental and physical interactions that cannot be satisfactorily reproduced artificially; they need to be found in the “real world.”

But will they buy it

A products success or failure may often depend on how well the product was defined before it was developed. Some products based on a developers concepts may become popular and in demand, but, in most cases, because of the narrow perspective of a developers specific application, such products rarely hit the high revenue mark. To raise the probability of success for a newly announced product or product enhancement, both the marketing and development communities must have a road map of the direction they wish to take. These road maps are referred to as market requirements and product (or technical) specifications, both of which are required for the testing organization to develop a comprehensive test plan. The more complete and detailed these two documents are, the greater the probability that the product will succeed in the marketplace.