English to French translation

Ada Lovelace Day

March 24, 2009

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged much lately. I’ve had to dedicate all my time to translating but I’m hoping I can get back to writing more regularly next month. However, I didn’t want to miss Ada Lovelace day, which celebrates women in technology (Ada Lovelace was one of the world's first computer programmers). The woman I particularly admire in this field is Gina Trapani, the founder or lifehacker. She can also be found on Twitter.

What I like about her is that she is able to transmit her huge and expert knowledge in a way that is fun and perfectly understandable, even for someone like me who struggles to understand anything vaguely technical. Thanks Gina.

Comments

Ada Lovelace is new to me. Very interesting. And I've been an avid fan of Lifehacker for some time. Gina Trapani: "Fun", yes. "Perfectly understandable"? To me, yes, most of the time. But some of her stuff is beyond me -I'm not very "technical".

Another person I admire in the IT world is Mitchell Baker, "chairperson" of the Mozilla foundation (you know: the people who brought us Firefox).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker

One could also mention a remarkable woman called Eva Pascoe. She co-founded Cyberia, the first Internet café in the UK. I used to read all her stuff at the time (long ago) when she had a column in the Independent.

There are quite a few others.

I must say I've always considered them first and foremost as journalists, authors, IT specialists etc, who happen to be women.

But they may well (alas) have found it more difficult to make themselves heard and succeed in their chosen field because they are women. If that is so, then they deserve to be congratulated for overcoming an unfair extra obstacle.

There are of course an awful lot of brilliant women making their mark on the technology sector: Fast Company issued a list recently, it'w worth a read. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/the-most-influential-women-in-technology.html

Oh and I feel I should add that the reason why I find Gina "perfectly understandable" is that I know not to bother with her most geeky articles.

How could I forget Esther Dyson ? She's one of the best!

For those who don't know about this remarkable woman, the BBC has a piece about her: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7852653.stm

In the right-hand column, links to other women prominent in the IT / Internet world. Well worth a look.

OK, I guess I have to come out of the geek closet and say that my own daughter is actually named for Ada Byron Lovelace. In addition to being a good inspiration (and my daughter is pretty geeky so it seems to be working...), it's a palindrome which we thought added to the appeal! Happy Ada day to all of the tech-savvy women out there!

Hi

I was browsing the web this morning when I came across one more name: Barbara Liskov. I'd never heard of her, because her work has been very highly technical. But she was awarded the prestigious Turing prize for 2008.

See http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/turing-liskov-0310.html

So who is she? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Liskov

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