The Language of Genealogy

posted by Scott Andrew Bird

The tracing of ancestors often leads to countries with a culture – and language – very different to your own. Fortunately there are a number of online resources to help you decipher the occasional piece of information which isn’t in your mother tongue, or any other language you know.

Whilst a number of these resources are free, bear in mind that automatic translation of text isn’t perfect; however it is generally good enough to give you an idea of the meaning. Specific items, such as dates and names, are usually fine.

Google Language Tools
www.google.com/language_tools

Offered here are a search tool looking at pages written in a specific language (or located in a particular country), a text or web page translation tool, and links to the numerous versions of Google around the world (each in the language of the host country).

WorldLingo
www.worldlingo.com/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html

In addition to the free text and web page translation tools, the site features a browser tool, an email translator, text and page translation tools (paid services) which can be added to a website, and a translator API for programming use (from $29.95).

The browser tool facilitates automatic translation of the current web page, allowing the page to be viewed in any of a dozen languages. Unfortunately this tool is only available for Microsoft Internet Explorer v5 and up, and costs $19.95 per year.

Moji
moji.mozdev.org

Moji is a japanese term meaning ‘character’. The tool here is a Mozilla Firefox extension which allows japanese characters on a page to be highlighted and automatically translated. Note that this is designed to translate individual words rather than sentences or entire pages; although long strings of characters are sometimes given a reasonable translation.

Babel Fish
world.altavista.com

Free text and web page translation tools are available here, as well as an automatic translation tool for your site (also free).