import string


def tokenize(txt, translator=None):
    """ Tokenize text - converting to lower characters, eliminating puncutations
    Args:
        txt: text to be tokenized; str
        translator: this includes punctuations for translate() func; dict()
    """
    if not translator:
        translator = str.maketrans("", "", string.punctuation)
    tokens = str(txt).lower().translate(translator).strip().split()
    return tokens