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Praise the Sun!

A few weeks back, I told you about social networks and how I wanted to get rid of them so that my self-promotion wouldn’t rely on the whims of a few company heads. In the same spirit of, say, de-google-ification writ large, I thought I would try to extend this idea to the rest of the tools I use everyday. In this short post, I’ll take stock and look at what I used before, and what I use now.

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An elegant weapon for a more civilized age

As a translator, I will usually say that I see myself more as a craftsman than as an artist. And if something defines a good craftsman, it’s using the right tools. But what are the tools of the translator? Let’s think:

  • Word-processing software
  • Dictionaries (monolingual, bilingual, technical, synonyms, slang, swear words, onomatopoeia… ALL the dictionaries)
  • Spellchecking software
  • Reference books (glossaries, manuals, etc.)
  • An online encyclopedia
  • CAT tools?
  • Generative artificial intelligence (Why not? Read this.)

I already have all this and use it regularly. Is that everything, though? No! I’m forgetting the most fundamental of them all, and eagle-eyed readers who appreciate my subtle talent for image editing have already guessed what it is: the keyboard. (Because I’m indeed not translating with a pen, finding it dangerously deprived of any backup function.)

The keyboard, then. But not just any keyboard.