Tools to read or write French

En Français
21

MacOS seems to be pretty good at this - plus they come with the added feature of the long key press to display a choice of diacritics.

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22

I have found Deepl to be very much context related. Putting in single words doesn’t necessarily give the result you might expect, unless it happens to have had similar contexts to work with. Part of my work involves translating technical and legal texts to/from English/German/French so I have experimented a bit to see how Deepl’s suggestions might compare to my own translations. The day will come when humans will no longer be necessary, I fear, certainly for the most common language combinations.

23

If you do have a Google Workplace subscription, you can try turning on their autosuggestion feature (it is my understanding that with paying subscriptions, Google doesn’t slurp your data in the same way). Obviously, if you are free user, rather than a subscriber, then turning it on is yet another way for Google to analyse your personal data, but you might find it of use.

24

This is to be expected, indeed a human translator would have difficulty with “in focus” without context.

If we are talking about a photograph then “nette” (WR tells me) is right - but if we are talking about “in focus” meaning to have attention drawn to something then “en ligne de mire” might be more appropriate.

25

So…is anyone using a French Azerty keyboard as their primary one? I have one, but have never taken the plunge and connected it.

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26

I just switch on my tablet depending on what I’m doing

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27

Moi ! - see my rant above about its many shortcomings. I read a while back that they’re thinking about redesigning it, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing for me as I’m now used to the present lay-out and instead struggle with QWERTY

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28

I do every day, and have done for the past 20-odd years :rofl: :rofl:

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29

Me too!

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30

Bought my first one 18 years ago and been using only azerty ever since, day-in-day-out, can’t handle a qwerty keyboard after all these years, in fact, only see one once every couple of years anyway. azerty on tablette, telephone and in the cars too. :wink:

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31

I have always used AZERTY keyboard for all french correspondence, accents in all the right places

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32

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As well as my tablet

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33

I learnt to touch type on a French keyboard. Then I went to work in an international organisation in Germany where I had a Swiss keyboard, which I used daily for 4 years. In between, I’ve had to use various personal and professional computing devices with GB keyboards, US keyboards, DE keyboards and their PC/Mac variants - I even had a Dvorak keyboard for a while, so I’m a bit keyboarded out ! The worst bit is remembering passwords with different keyboard layouts, inevitably leads to some incorrect entries on occasion, especially with muscle memory being what it is :crazy_face:

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34

Same here, touch typing on a french keyboard (6+ years translating). I’ve used German and Italian keyboards, the Italian was a good compromise azerty/qwerty for my three languages but like you, once you’re familiar with azerty, there’s no going back. And yes, nightmare typing passwords on the odd occasion back in the uk on a qwerty!

35

I can do that too, and only using 1 finger on each hand🤭

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36

I haven’t used Microsoft for ages. OS is the best.

37

I had “all digits of both hands, no eyes, touch typing” drummed into me by the very fearsome teacher of the BTS Secrétariat Trilingue class of the lycée at which I was a language assistant - I cheat nowadays of course and look down at the keyboard when I’ve only got my small screen to work on :rofl: :rofl:

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38

So did I… and she was thrilled to see I’d typed a page of complete drivel, since that proved I hadn’t actually looked at the keyboard… :rofl: :rofl:

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39

My excuse was that I was distracted by all the nubile 18+ year old females in the class…I was 20 at the time, and some of them were older than I was !

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40

Bonjour, everyone. :hugs:

Thanks for the helpful tips. I definitely will be trying out the keyboard lexibar. Just need to find a suitable laptop now. :sweat_smile: Something small. Anywho, I think I heard of a few translation sites, but I am not sure if it was any good when it comes to proper French translation called Wordreference, MerciApp, Antidote, Cordial, Bon Patron. In English check, I use Grammarly.