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Thanks
to Dear Myrtle (Pat Richley-Erickson) for posting a link on her FB page to the referenced article!
Eventually we all
come across an article that is written in a language other than our native
language that we desperately would like to know the contents of!
In the genealogical
community and elsewhere, those who don’t speak the “native language” of the
article, often skip articles not written in their native language and so are
missing out on some great and possible vital information about their
non-US-born ancestors!
You don’t need to
do that! There are many online
translation sites like Babelfish, Google Translate, and Bing Translator with others being created and/or
improved that make it so very easy for you to get a “rough” translation of the
webpage or document’s content or email.
For example, you
are surfing using Google Chrome and come across a non-English website. Google Chrome will ask you if you would like
for it to translate the page – I typically say “heck yes,” please translate it
for me! This has opened the way to so
many neat databases (including those found in the various non-US editions of
Ancestry).
And, have you not
contacted a non-US archive or researcher or genealogy society because you don’t
know the native language? Again, I have
used online translation tools to craft e-mails and posts for
non-English-speaking individuals.
Are they the
best-written and grammatically wonderful queries? Of course not! And, do they get the gist of my question
across and have I received responses to those queries? Yes. I
had a whole dialogue with someone in France where he wrote in “online translated”
English and I wrote in “online translated” French and that worked out just
fine, though, there definitely were some “funny” turns of phrase
The original
article mentioned by Dear Myrtle states ...
According to the translation firm Smartling, native English speakers only represented 27% of the total Internet population
in 2011. Yet, 56% of online pages are English-only. So how do we break language
barriers online? Well, here are a few tools that can help you browse content in
a language you don’t speak – pages of course, but also video and even speech.
Read the full article to learn about some neat
translation tools to both allow you to read material you come across and also how you might make your material available by posting and/or creating it in a language more like that spoken by your ancestors than yourself!
Have you recently and successfully communicated with a non-English individual about your genealogy research via e-mail, web post? or successfully navigated a non-English database? Please share your successes and help encourage more of us to not let a little matter of "language" stop us in our pursuit of genealogical valuable material!
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Suggestions
for topics for future UpFront with NGS
posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to [email protected]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © National
Geneal ogical Society, 3108 Columbia
Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Republication
of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for
non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS .
Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article.
Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles
for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission
to [email protected]. All republished articles may not be
edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom
of each UpFront article.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Think your friends,
colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting?
If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Suggestions
for topics for future UpFront with NGS
posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to [email protected]
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