how did the NES?

First up, the Famicom (& later the NES) was programmed in assembly (6502 assembly to be exact)... which is an extremely low-level programming language as it's just one level above machine code (being pure binary).

The programmers already knew the coding syntax & all code was utilizing the ASCII standard (as UniCode wouldn't become a standard until October, 1991), so no translation is necessary for majority of the game code.  The only time translation & localization would be required for the games to convert the game's dialog into the necessary language they're releasing the game in (English, French, German, Spanish, ect.)  Such translations were done "in house" or a subsidiary (like Nintendo of America) as companies were high protective of their unreleased products & NDA's are a commonplace.

As for taking credit for the NES...  you can try, but you'll get massively discredited by the world in general as it's a purely a Japanese system that was redesigned for the American market & it's inception is well documented.

This is a stupid question and you can't take credit for anything of note, I'm certain about that.

Programming languages are just sets of commands. You can customize what those commands are called by language. Then all those commands you type in English will be in whatever language anyone else prefers. Variable names and other things you name yourself won't change, but the commands are all the programmer really needs to understand.