Tripped on the two-yard-line

Excuse if I vent a little anger this evening.

We have been snuggling up to a Very Large Financial Services Corporation since before Christmas, trying to get them to buy our database. Last month came the answer: the department of VLFSC that would use the software has tried out the demo and thinks that the database is just wonderful, they would be very happy to use it.

There remains one tiny little problemette: the database is in german, and they use only english-language software. Could we not write them an english version?

Well, of course we could.

We contracted the job out to someone who did a third the work, billed us for half the money, and then disappeared from the face of the earth. So I translated the rest of it myself last week. Meanwhile my partner approached the department of VLFSC that buys things, and tried to set up a meeting to show them the english version.

The VLFSC thing-buyers refused to meet us.

They will not consider buying the translated version that VLFSC itself asked us to write, because it's new and they don't buy new things. That's just company policy, and no, we won't discuss it with the other department. Goodbye.

Permit me to point out that this is 99.73% bullshit. The software itself is unchanged: it is four years old, well tested and very stable. The only thing new is the words that appear on screen. A file called "german.rsc" which was full of words like "malerei", has been replaced by a file called "english.rsc" which is full of words like "painting". Oooh, how terribly frightening.

Now, I grant you the possibility that there may be a spelling mistake or two in there, but (a) that doesn't prevent the software from working, (b) nor the user from understanding it, and (c) have you ever looked at e.g. the help files for Microsoft Word?

Almost everybody loses from this decision. We are out of pocket by the costs of the translation. The department will have to use a second-rate piece of software instead of what they wanted. The thing-buyers alone will come out as winners (in their own eyes), proving their worth to VLFSC by valiantly defending the mothership against the curse of new software.

Just think: if it hadn't been for them, the department would have bought something they liked, that suited the way they worked, with which they would have been happy and productive.

Thank God that didn't happen!