UpFront with NGS: translating

Showing posts with label translating. Show all posts

09 August 2017

Commonly Used Word Translation Lists – still invaluable even in our increasingly digitized world!

Commonly Used Word Translation Lists – still invaluable even in our increasingly digitized world!

Though I now have ready access to Google Translate and other online translation tools, I still find word lists helpful.

A major part of that is that:

(1) word lists include genealogy-specific terms

(2) sometimes the language used in older documents is considered archaic and not always part of online translators or dictionaries

These are always examples of genealogists helping genealogists.

I was reminded of this when I re-reviewed the commonly used words translated lists created back in 2015 by Relatively Curious about Genealogy. The languages included are Czech, Danish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Afrikaans, Finnish, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish.

And, FamilySearch still has the word lists it created years ago. These are still invaluable and the wiki page Word List is the easiest way to access these. Back in the day I used the Finnish, Swedish, German and Polish versions exhaustively as I researched Finnish and Ruthenian ancestors.

Cyndi’s List has a page Languages & Translations >> Foreign Language Translations & Dictionaries: Genealogy which is also quite useful.

Do a google search on “genealogy” and “word list” and many others will come up such as the Norwegian Genealogy Dictionary, Old Flemish Words, and numerous other helpful websites.

What is your favorite genealogical word list?

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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10 August 2015

Google Translate App -- Seems like this would be a wonderful family history research tool!

The headline caught my eye -- See the world in your language with Google Translate. My first thought was not my upcoming trip to Columbia, since I’ll have a real-time translator in the form of my Spanish-speaking daughter, and it was genealogy!

Most of us have heritage that spans the globe which means that we are often stymied by not being able to read something just because it’s not in our native language!

I often use Google Translate on my computer to facilitate my understanding of non-English terms and content or when I’ve needed to translate from English into another language to send an email requesting research support.

Well, I don’t always have my computer with me (or tablet or any of the techy toys that don’t fit in a pants pocket!) or if I do, I might not have easy access to WIFI (yes I could set up a WIFI hotspot on my phone and it’s all becoming rather involved at this point) and yet I do always have my cell phone (set on vibrate as any good library/archive researcher does) with me!

Using the link in the blog post, I downloaded the app to my cell phone. Obviously, you can also go to the "play store” (for Android phones) or equivalent, search on the app, and download that way. Do know that on my cell phone it is called Translate – I was looking for Google Translate & so it took a bit of elimination to figure out which app (my phone comes with an app called S Translate – wouldn’t you know?!?!).

To test it – I tried two things both in Finnish.

+ a column heading from an old Finnish document which said Admitterade

+ the heading from the Finnish Archives website, which says Arkistolaitos. I picked this because when you select “In English” for the page, this actually isn’t translated.

Using the app and taking an image of my first test item was not a success. I got the response No Finnish text found. To be fair though, Google translate on the web couldn’t handle it either because it happens to be a Swedish word. During select periods of times and in select areas of Finland (true even today), the official language was Swedish and not Finnish. Lesson learned – the correct language identification helps!

The app still didn’t recognize the word and so I used the typing feature. When I did that, it suggested that I really wanted admitterad though the English translation was also admitterad. So, a bust. Though, you can click on a speaker icon and have your phone pronounce the word selected. I thought that was kind of neat. If I couldn’t translate it I could at least hear it pronounced!

For my second test, I did have success. The app translated an image of the word Arkistolaitos as Archive Department.

Do know that you will need to download language packets (you will be prompted) for many languages. The app indicated whether this is required or not when you select a language.

Don’t forget to say what language! It can auto detect if you don’t know and otherwise, I do suggest choosing a language. The default for me ended up being Spanish to English and so obviously, a Finnish word was a non-starter.

Obviously, I did not strenuously test this app and the photo image capability. And, I had mixed success.

I do possibly have some colonial North Carolina German-language church records in my research future ... maybe I’ll have more success with those!

Did you try the app? Did you have success using the photographed image method? Can you see using it real-time while doing family history research when computer-less?

Editor’s Note: Upfront with NGS posts on related topics -- Global Name Translation (TM) Technology launched by MyHeritage [2015], Globalism in Genealogy Webinars! Foreign to us languages are less of a barrier than ever before! [2013], and Bye bye Babel: Breaking language barriers online [2012]

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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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!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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02 August 2013

Ancient documents go digital at Duke -- glimpses of a distant past, so different yet so similar!

Technology and crowdsourcing efforts continue to really benefit genealogists and historians.

Recent efforts at Duke University are allowing documents from thousands of years ago to become available to not just scholars and everyone. The first step was the digitization of Duke’s collection of papyrus fragments. The second and current step is the transcribing (and translating) of these fragments from Greek into English. If you know Greek, you can help.

Read more about the project (and do watch the video).

Access the Duke Papyrus Archive.

I was struck by Duke University professor Josh Sosin’s comments that in essence these are fascinating for the glimpse they give into life thousands of years ago, in some ways so different from our lives today and yet also so similar.

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06 February 2013

Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration -- Really Neat Genealogy Applications

Have you ever used Captcha as a security measure? If you have, you are part of one of Luis von Ahn’s online collaborative projects.

And, you have been helping to digitize a book just by filling out a Captcha! Back in 2008 I wrote an article on how ReCaptcha (a version of the basic Captcha program) explaining how we are digitizing those books. As genealogists and family historians – we like to see books digitized and the older the better!

Well, Luis von Ahn has another collaborative project that’s now live, Duolingo!

Duolingo is a free service that helps you learn languages with your friends while simultaneously contributing to translate real-world content from the Web.

We frequently have talked about machine translation and how far it’s come, most recently in Bye bye Babel: Breaking language barrier onlines . And, it’s far from perfect! Anything that helps translate the contents of the web from it’s native language into other languages and vice versa, again benefits genealogists and family historians.

Do watch this video on Ted.com – where Luis von Ahn talks about both projects and his motivations. The above image reflects one of many "unfortunate" justapositions of words that have been identified in ReCaptcha and to which humorous images have been attached.

As you might guess, this makes part of the video quite funny though it is incredibly informative. Who says learning cannot be fun?!?! Though the video talks about the Duolingo project in the future (it is dated 2011), the project is live via the link given previously.

The Duolingo website also has a video (lower left) which talks about how the project is able to provide free language courses.

I can't wait to see what might be his next project!

I also came across this article 7 Global Online Collaboration projects that are changing the world. This post talks about the two projects already mentioned and a few others. Check it out!

Now that we have books being digitized (Captcha) and non-English ones being translated (Duolingo) what next frontier of online massive scale collaboration would you like to see that would benefit the research of our ancestors? Especially ones like these where it's not obvious that you are performing a service as you ensure that your transaction is secure or you learn a new language.

Are you aware of other online massive scale collaboration projects which benefits ancestor hunters?

Editor’s Note: Thanks to NGS board member Barbara Renick for bringing the video and Duolingo to my attention.

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26 July 2012

Bye bye Babel: Breaking language barriers online

Source for image

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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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!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

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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 UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com