Agreed. I'm a native Japanese speaker and learned English because I thought it was required to learn programming. And I had thought it was the norm until I met other Japanese professional programmers. Somehow they thought they were allowed to stay whining about not being able to get information from English resources.
Once I told the management to have them learn English because it's almost mandatory for a software engineer to understand English as much as an aspiring Go player would learn Japanese. But the management told me back it's _harsh_ to require them to learn anything more. Harsh? Huh?
That said, I found the need for technical books real, and translated several English books (including Programming Erlang) into Japanese. However I know this effort will not scale and these days I am inclined to abandon translation and tell them that English is just another tool you have to learn to survive.
Once I told the management to have them learn English because it's almost mandatory for a software engineer to understand English as much as an aspiring Go player would learn Japanese. But the management told me back it's _harsh_ to require them to learn anything more. Harsh? Huh?
That said, I found the need for technical books real, and translated several English books (including Programming Erlang) into Japanese. However I know this effort will not scale and these days I am inclined to abandon translation and tell them that English is just another tool you have to learn to survive.