The UK & Ireland Genealogical Information Service (GENUKI)

GENUKI is an umbrella network of web pages providing genealogy-related information for England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the other British islands. It can be reached at:

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/ or Click Here

It contains a full library of resources. You can browse pages related to each country, each county within that country and then at each city, town or community within that county. Each county's page contains links to information related to "Archives and Libraries", "Church Records", "Civil Registration", "Probate Records", "Societies" and other genealogical links.

"Church Records" include marriage witness indexes, pictures of churches in each county, as well as links to publications available online and links to various Family History Centers in each county. Check it out!!

Translation

There are several reasons for researchers to yearn for some sort of translation service. The first, of course, is the translation of written records which originate in foreign countries. Census records, deeds for land, titles, papers relating to ancestors who may have been knighted, indentured, convicted or deported, penal records, business records, wills, estate papers, emigration records, birth records, newspaper articles and many more written documents may exist on ancestors and any of these may come into your possession during the course of your research efforts. Being able to translate such documents can provide invaluable information and leads to yet other records or individuals.

In addition, since access to the InterNet allows you to find resources and people all over the world, it is more than likely that, in the course of your research, you will find yourself communicating (or wishing you could communicate) with people in other countries from whom you seek information or to whom you are actually related. It is said that English is becoming a universal language, but there are millions, in the world, who do not speak it. But if you can both write, either by e-mail or by surface mail (known, in computer circles as "snail-mail", due to the fact that it takes days or weeks to reach its destination, whereas e-mail is almost instantaneous), then you can each understand the other.

Also, there is the issue of correctly phrasing your writings to foreign officials and others, in their own languages, as you make inquiries, request copies of documents and so on. In this area, being able to translate can be of enormous value.

So it was with great joy that I recently located two translation sites, on the web, which I believe can be of great use to genealogical researchers. One of them uses computer automation to perform the translation, the second uses volunteer translators to perform the translations. I shall tackle them in that order.

Babelfish

The first of these translation services is called the "Babelfish" site (named, I'm sure, after the tower of Babel mentioned in the Bible). This site can be found at the following address:

"http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate?" or Click Here

When you get to this site, all you will see will be a small window into which you can enter any text you want translated and, below the window, a pop-up menu allowing you to choose the language you want the text translated from and the the language you want the text translated to and a small button marked "Translate".
As I said, this service uses a computer to perform the translation. The computer contains massive dictionaries in each of six languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. It will translate from English to any of the other languages or from any of those languages to English.

New languages are being added to the system; in fact, when I got wind of this site there were only four languages to chooses from. Now, three weeks later, there are six. This leads one to hope that, in the not to distant future, more languages will be added, including languages used by ancestors who hail from countries such as Russia, as well as more obscure countries such as the Baltic states, the Scandinavian countries, and the countries of the middle east.

The procedure for using the site is quite simple; you enter the text you want translated into the window. If you are entering English for translation into a foreign language, this is quite straightforward; entering a foreign language takes a little more care because you need to use any special characters (like the "Į" in "franĮais", for example) that are in the text.

If you're a Macintosh user, this is a cinch; just open your "Keyboard" control panel and choose the language you want. From that point on, the keyboard will automatically use the right characters for the language you've chosen as you type in your text. (You'll need to open the "Key Caps" accessory, so you can see which characters are on which keys; you can have them both open at once, so you can refer to them.) You can type your text right into the translation box. Then press the "Translate" button to obtain the translation. (Be sure to change the "Keyboard" control panel back to "US" when you're done!!)

In Windows, it's considerably more involved. There are two possible ways to do this in Windows. You can select "Insert" or "Tools" from the tool bar in your word processing program and click the mouse. You should then be able to select the character and insert it into your text. Unfortunately, you must repeat this procedure for each of the special characters as you need them. This means that the process is time-consuming, so if your text is very long, you should probably open a word processing document while you're off-line and enter your text into it. Then you can go online, go to the site, "copy" the finished text from your word processing document and "paste" it into the translation window. Then press the "Translate" button to obtain the translation.

You can also find these characters by using Windows 95's "Character Map" utility. You can open "Character Map" by clicking "Start", pointing to "Programs", pointing to "Accessories", and then clicking "Character Map". Then you can "copy" and "paste" each character that you need from the "Character Map" to your word processing document. When you're finished, you can go online, go to the site, "copy" the finished text from your word processing document and "paste" it into the translation window. Then press the "Translate" button to obtain the translation.

While this is a great resource, you should know that, since it's dictionary-based and thus has no idea what's really being said, its translations can be imperfect, odd or even funny. For example, a translation of the phrase:

"Combien de kilos pĖsĖ-t-elle? Combien de livres?", which should mean, "How many kilos does it weigh? How many pounds?", comes out ""How many kilos does it weigh? How many books?". In this case, it is because the French word "livre" can mean "book" and also mean "pound". On the other hand, the phrase "Comment est-ce qu'on compte les distances en France, en milles ou en kilomĖtres?" correctly translated to "How does one count the distances in France, miles or kilometers?"

There are also differences in the way that sentences are constructed in different languages, so sometimes the words may come out a little jumbled. I recommend that you keep a dictionary of the language you're working in beside you, as you read the translated text; that way you can look up any words that don't seem to translate correctly. Also, try to mentally look beyond the words to the spirit of the phrase or sentence. The words may not translate exactly, but you can still get the spirit of what's being said.

I would also advise that, when you're using this translation site to translate an e-mail, for example, that you want to send to someone who speaks another language, that you sure to point out, at the beginning of your letter, that you are using an automatic translator and that there may be errors. That way, they'll know to overlook any inadvertent blunders.

The Trans@genealogy.net Service

The other excellent service I found is called "trans@genealogy.net". It is a volunteer service that translates documents from one language to another. Since the translation is done by human beings who know both languages, the translation is not subject to many of the potential errors we discussed on the Babelfish site. Since it is all done by volunteers, however, it's important that you follow some rules in order to make it as easy as possible for them.

This service has, at various times, supported the following languages: CZEch, DANish, DUTch, ENGlish, FREnch, GERman, HUNgarian, NORwegian, POLish, PORtuguese, ROManian, SPAnish, SWEdish. The first three letters of each language name are capitalized as you see. Those three letters are the code for that language, as you will see below. The following translations are currently supported: CZE>ENG, CZE>GER, DAN>ENG, DAN>GER, DUT>ENG, DUT>GER, ENG>CZE, ENG>DAN, ENG>DUT, ENG>FRE, ENG>GER, ENG>HUN, ENG>NOR, ENG>POL, ENG>POR, ENG>ROM, ENG>SPA, ENG>SWE, FRE>ENG, FRE>GER, FRE>HUN, FRE>SPA, GER>CZE, GER>DAN, GER>DUT, GER>ENG, GER>FRE, GER>POL, GER>POR, GER>ROM, GER>SPA, GER>SWE, HUN>ENG, HUN>FRE, NOR>ENG, NOR>GER, POL>ENG, POL>GER, POR>ENG, POR>GER, ROM>ENG, ROM>GER, RUS>ENG, SPA>ENG, SPA>FRE, SPA>GER, SWE>ENG, SWE>GER

As I said, this service has, at various times, supported all the translations services listed above. However, because of occasional shortages in the availability of volunteers, they may not all be available at the time that you write. Your best bet is to write to trans@genealogy.net and inquire as to whicxh languages are currently available.

The address to send your translation requests to is:

trans@genealogy.net (Click Here for E-mail Form)

The first line (not the "subject line", but the first line of the actual message) should read:

#SRC>DEST

where SRC is the source language and DEST is the destination language. Be sure and put the "#" sign on the front!! For example: #ENG>GER would be for an English to German translation.

Your message should have a maximum length of 40 lines. Remember that these folks are doing this for free, usually in addition to their daily work. The shorter your message is, the higher is the chance that they can do the translation in their next coffee break. If your text to be translated is longer than 40 lines cut it into shorter pieces and send it in pieces. If all translators for a given language pair are busy your request will be queued and processed as soon as a translator becomes available. A message indicating that your request has been queued is a good indicator that the service has become saturated. I'm sure there are volunteers who will do long documents, but they may very well want (and deserve!!) a fee for their services. You can be pretty sure that that fee will be considerably less than a professional translator would charge!! You are free to work out any arrangement you like with a particular translator.

As a courtesy to other others (and to the volunteers!) you should not submit too many requests at a time. No more than 5 requests from a single e-mail address will be queued at any time.

As this service is specifically for genealogical researchers, you should stick to the subject of genealogy. That is letters to/from cousins or other relatives, archives, parishes etc. The program cannot check it but the translator can and if you abuse the service they don't have to serve you.

There is no cost for this service. A big "Thank You" to the translator would be nice. The volunteers are willing to help, but of course they can't make any guarantees regarding correctness nor can they be held liable in any way. If you need guaranteed translation, you should seek out a professional translator.

Well, that should keep you busy for awhile!! Make bookmarks of these sites, in your web browser, and try them out. I think you'll find them to be invaluable resources as you reach across the water searching for your roots!!