Sébastien Denaux

Being acquired by an American group led us to explore other linguistic horizons such as China and Russia. Our software was actually composed of a multitude of modules, only the WEB interface of which was fully translated into English. As the only web developer on the team at the time, and thus mastering internationalization mechanisms, I gradually found myself responsible for managing translations for all modules. Something relatively simple in an application designed for this purpose becomes a great adventure in an application that was originally only French with a 10-year history. Although I had already worked with translation mechanisms, I discovered interesting challenges: protean linguistic resources, processes and tools for extracting strings to be translated, processes and tools for importing translations, translation management tools, interactions with translators, management of Cyrillic and Chinese characters, etc. The other advantage was being completely autonomous. Main technologies used: XML, resx files, SQL Main tools used: Sisulizer translation manager, Excel, VBA.

I changed teams and products. I now primarily participate in the evolutions of the company's main product's WEB portal. The portal is developed in ASP.NET. The technical environment being similar to the previous project, my progress is more on the relational and personal level. I assert myself more and more and manage my time much better. At the end of this period, our bosses retired and sold our small SME after 30 years of flourishing life to the American group ITRON, a commercial partner, our main software being part of the solution they were selling. Definitely another world which I will not dwell on here... I will just say that I am not made for this world. The positive point is that this period allowed me to practice spoken English and quickly become comfortable, initially with our English teacher, then with our English, American, and Indian colleagues. Skills acquired: spoken English Main technologies used: C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Oracle, XML, XSLT Main tools used: TFS, Visual Studio

The previous project comes to an end. We will implement various evolutions over time for a few more years. Our team takes on a new project which consists of porting one of our Windows applications to a WEB application, reusing as much as possible the existing code of the said Windows application developed in C#. The WEB application will therefore be in ASP.NET. From a technical point of view, it's a challenge in more ways than one. Using code initially written for a Windows application and not intended to be shared is a challenge... Moreover, the graphical interfaces to be ported were very complex, and adapting them to the WEB was epic. From a non-technical point of view, following a restructuring of the team members, I have proof by example that the quality of the manager is paramount and that communication skills (NVC or others) are a real asset for ensuring serene collaboration. Main technologies used: C#, ASP.NET, Oracle Main tools used: Visual Studio, Toad, VSS