I Thought a Global Project Meant Speaking English. What Waited for Me Was “Translation Hell.”

Whoa! The pile of English documents on my desk looked like skyscrapers in a financial district.

It was my eighth year as a working professional.
I had been raising my hand for years, saying, “I want to join a global project.”

I had a little confidence in my English.
Still, my TOEIC score was only around 750.
Looking back, I was far from fluent.

But I wanted to work on international projects.
I wanted to collaborate with people overseas.
I wanted to see a world beyond what could only be seen in Japan.

So I kept studying English little by little, waiting for my chance.

And finally, that opportunity arrived.

“You’ll be joining the English project.”

At that time, I was genuinely excited.
Finally, it had come.
The global project I had been waiting for.

But there was one thing bothering me.
There was a sales manager on the team with an intense power-harassment style.

Honestly, the atmosphere felt heavy.
Still, work is work.

“This is the chance I finally earned. I’m going to give it everything.”

That’s what I told myself.

A Financial System Headquartered in London

The center of the project was London.
The system belonged to the IT division of a financial company in London, and the goal was to deploy it in Japan.

Hitachi participated as the Japanese vendor.
Our role was to professionally review the system and figure out how to introduce it into the Japanese environment.

Basically, the system already running in London would be packaged and brought to Japan.

There were support members on the Japanese side as well.
However, the true headquarters was completely in London.

Which meant the information, culture, and rules were all based on “their standards.”

And the application team consisted of… just me.

The First Job Was “Reading”

We were handed a massive amount of documentation.

Operations manuals.
Schedule definitions.
Batch processing designs.
Database settings.
Server configurations.
Network structures.
External system integrations.

As expected from a financial system, everything was written in extreme detail.

In other words, if you could read the documents, you could understand the entire system.

So the first mission was clear.

“First, understand these documents.”

Then the Biggest Problem Appeared

Members from secondary vendors were assigned based on their specialties.

Server engineers.
Network engineers.
Database engineers.

Everyone started reading their respective documents.

But…

The problem was simple.

Nobody understood English.

Well, technically, they could read some of it.
But they couldn’t fully understand the specialized English unique to financial systems.

Naturally, questions started coming to me.

“Yamaguchi-san, can you read this?”
“What does this mean?”
“How is this system structured?”

Before I realized it, I had become the “translation hub” because I was the one looking at the entire system from the application perspective.

The Reality of a Global Project

Eventually, we reached a decision.

“Let’s just translate everything.”

Another member who could interpret English joined me, and we started the translation work.

Back then, there was no AI like today.

We relied heavily on Google Translate, translating documents one sentence at a time.
If the meaning felt strange, we corrected it.
We checked technical terms.
Then translated again.

Morning until night — translation.
Really, nothing but translation.
Endless translation.

At some point, I started wondering, “Am I becoming a translation machine?”

But during those days, I realized something important.

Global Projects Are Not About “English.” They Are About “Structural Understanding.”

At the time, I thought global projects were simply a world where people spoke English.

But reality was completely different.

What was truly necessary was:

• The ability to understand an entire system structurally
• The ability to interpret technical terminology
• The ability to understand assumptions from different cultures
• The ability to move forward even without complete understanding

English was only the entrance.

The true essence was the ability to connect different worlds.

That is why those painful days of translation became the foundation for my future career.

Buried under endless English documents, I was slowly building the perspective needed to survive in global business.

I can do it! Starting tomorrow, I will take the next step forward.