For historians doing world history, or any form of transnational history, language translation and interpretation are two of the most useful skills in their research toolbox.  Unfortunately, as important as these skills are to our research, historians are often on the outskirts of language research and language technologies.  Google’s  Translator Toolkit is one such technology that seems to have flown over the head of most historians.  In the last three years since I began using the program, I have yet to hear it mentioned by a single historian.  In the video above I take you through a small tutorial of the Toolkit’s abilities and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find it as useful as I have.

Scapple is at its most basic a mind-mapping program.  I use the program as a quick and easy brain-dump platform to just get things out of my head, but by its simple nature I believe the program could be used by students to take notes and by historical researchers to organize their data and arguments.   I have found Scapple to be very useful and worth the $15 purchase.

To download a free trial visit: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php