Time goes by, things change…
On 1 April 2023, I humbly passed the milestone of ten years of freelance activity. Ten years in a profession that is much more than just a job: translation is a real passion for me. I say ‘humble’ because I didn’t celebrate the event with great pomp, preferring to put this energy and investment into modernising the image of my little ‘baby’, because it’s important to keep up with the times and because the range of services that a translator should be able to offer is also evolving with the times.
Tabula rasa
Today I’d like to take a look at an expression that comes from another time, that of antiquity. The French expression ‘faire table rase’ (=to make a clean sweep of), from the Latin tabula rasa, was a wax tablet used by schoolchildren in those ancient times to write on, which they would level off (plane down) to carve out new inscriptions. From the use of this ancestral tool, the forerunner of our school slates, the idiom ‘faire table rase’ made its official appearance in the sixth edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française of 1835, which defines it as follows: “Said of a man who, considering the opinions or notions he holds as doubtful or uncertain, rejects them, in order to adopt them anew, modify them, or proscribe them definitively, after a serious and philosophical examination”.
So here we are, with a brand new website that I owe to a trio of chic and hard-working people: Sophie Mara from ‘SO Creative’ for the incredible photo shoot we did, Benjamin Jansen from ‘Agenz’ for the complete overhaul of the website, which was brilliantly carried out, and finally the logo, which I owe to the incredible Pierre Weyrich from ‘Studio Piet’, who created a new identity that suits me: Sober colours, a more precise and coherent baseline, but also a touch of originality with this elegant fountain pen that I sometimes associate with the head of a fox… When I see it, I immediately think of the expression “as cunning as a fox”, it suits me, but I’ll come back to that in a future blog post… Yes, because that’s the big novelty of this communication project: the blog posts. Each month there will be a new article covering the latest news in the profession, featuring real-life trivial topics and presenting more official aspects of the profession. The aim? To give you a better understanding of this world (which sometimes seems obscure) of the translator cooped up in his pigeon-loft with his doggie at his feet and his coffee in his hand. It’s an enduring cliché, and one that I intend to try and unravel in my own small way.
Enjoy your discovery!
Bruce