You can often use Google Translate for genealogy to help you translate single words or phrases. But what if you need to translate an entire passage or document? Here’s why you might want to use a different web tool–and a list of top translation websites from expert Katherine Schober.
Thanks to Katherine Schober of SK Translations for this guest blog post.
Google Translate for Genealogy–and its Limits
Google Translate is a good tool for translating individual words and short, non-complex sentences. But it works better with basic words rather than long sentences or paragraphs. This tool often ignores idioms, or words and phrases that mean something different than the actual words imply.
Mistranslations of idioms can completely change the meaning of a document and leave you confused about certain aspects of your ancestor’s life.
In German, for example, there are multiple idioms using the word “sausage,” a food that is a large part of the culture in Germany. If you type in the German idiom “Jemandem eine Extrawurst braten,” which literally means “to fry someone an extra sausage,” Google translates it word for word, coming up with the translation result “to bake an extra sausage.” This may leave the non-experienced person confused, thinking their ancestor was discussing cooking a meal. However, an experienced translator would know that this phrase actually means “to give someone special treatment,” and has nothing to do with cooking. (See my blog post, “10 Hilarious German Sausage Sayings to Try on Your Friends.”)
Google Translate can also be unreliable if a word has multiple meanings. For example, think of the word “run” in English. It can mean “a fast jog,” “a tear in your stocking,” “to be a candidate for an election,” and so on. Google Translate could easily pick the wrong English translation of your of your word, leaving you with a falsely translated document or simply very confused.
Beyond Google Translate: Best Translation Websites
Here are three websites I recommend when Google Translate just isn’t up to your genealogy translation needs:
Linguee.com: This is a very helpful translation site. Unlike Google Translate, it shows you words and phrases translated into English by actual translators and not machines. You receive the definition of the word, plus pages of various sample sentences that include your word/phrase in a contextual format (in both the foreign language and in English). This means you can scroll through the examples to see which translation is the most accurate English word for your document.
WordReference.com: This is an online dictionary with multiple language options available. Depending on the word, it may provide sentence examples and other entries where your word is found. This helps you to ensure the translated word is the right option for your text.
Google.com: Although Google Translate can’t always get the meaning right, the Google.com search engine is a wonderful reference. If you can’t find your foreign word on the sites above, try typing it into a Google search with the word English after it. Sometimes you will find forums where your word is discussed by various family historians. If this doesn’t work, try adding genealogy after English, or taking English out and just writing genealogy. Playing around with your search request may very well give you different results. And Lisa Louise Cooke recommends putting quotation marks around the word in order to ensure it appears in every search result. Here’s an example of how that search would look: “Geburt” English Genealogy
I’ve previously recommended top websites especially for German translations on this blog: click here to check it out. Good luck to Sue, who commented after reading that post: “Great article! I can’t wait to try some of these websites. We have a large stack of German letters written to my husband’s mother that look impossible to read. Thank you!”
Katherine Schober of SK Translations specializes in translating German genealogical and historical documents. She has recently joined Lisa Louise Cooke on the Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast: catch her creative, use-in-any-language translation tips in episodes #151 and #152. Not a Premium member yet? Click here to see what you’re missing out on in the Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast: Premium members get a year’s worth of access to all episodes! (Time for a binge-listening weekend??) And if you’d like to learn how to learn how to read the old German handwriting check out her online course here.
Making your family history accessible to your visually or hearing impaired relatives may require a little extra work. But the effort can mean making your genealogy discoveries more available and vivid for EVERYONE–now and in the future. Let these ideas help you!...
SHOW NOTES: Episode 294 of the Genealogy Gems podcast shines a spotlight on 15 under-the-radar websites that serious genealogists should know about. Lisa Louise Cooke reveals powerful resources like AI tools capable of deciphering old handwriting in unindexed records, clever ways to hunt for unique family artifacts and ephemera online, specialized digital libraries perfect for finding memoirs, how obscure fashion archives can help date your mystery photos, and cutting-edge map sites that let you search text within the historical maps themselves. Plus, stick around until the very end for a special bonus tech tip to make your research even smoother!
Listen to the Podcast Episode
To Listen click the media player below (AUDIO ONLY):
You know how OCR technology lets computers read typed text on old documents? For years, which didn’t work well for handwritten records. But FamilySearch is changing the game! Their Full-text Search project, available through FamilySearch Labs, is training AI to decipher historical handwriting. The exciting part? More and more handwritten records that once required tedious page-by-page Browse are becoming keyword searchable. Dive in and explore the collections currently using Full-text search.
2. Calculating Cousins with FamilySearch
Ever get tangled trying to figure out if someone’s your second cousin once removed, or… something else entirely? Take the guesswork out of cousin relationships with the fantastic Cousin Chart blog post on FamilySearch. It pulls together some of the best tools – a handy visualization chart, a ‘Cousin Calculator’ tool, and even a math-based method. Bookmark this one – it’s a lifesaver!
3. Ancestry.com – Just How Far Back Can They Go?
We know Ancestry.com lets you filter searches way back, even to the 1600s. But is that the limit? Not even close! According to Ancestry themselves, their oldest documents are the Mühldorf Deeds from Germany, dating back to the 1300s! And thanks to modern tech, even these incredibly old documents can be surprisingly legible and searchable. Visit Ancestry.com’s Card Catalog.
4. Get Organized with Family Tree Magazine
Feeling buried under piles of papers or drowning in digital files? Getting your genealogy organized is a common goal, and Family Tree Magazine has a fantastic resource page to help you finally conquer the chaos. Their Organize Your Genealogy page gathers their best guides on everything from taming paper clutter and digital files to organizing photos and your workspace.
5. Newspapers – Veridian Collections
Many of us were sad to see the newspaper site Elephind.com go. But the good news is, the company behind it, DL Consulting, is still helping libraries digitize their collections using their Veridian software. Why does this matter to you? Because you can browse the fascinating, digitized content from their clients – including many unique and free newspaper collections – directly through the Veridian website.
6. In Search of Memoirs at FamilySearch Digital Library
Imagine discovering a detailed, personal memoir written by an ancestor born over 170 years ago! That actually happened to me. For decades, I knew my husband’s great-grandmother, Minna Boettcher, born in 1853, had written about her pioneer life, but the book was lost. Then, just recently, my sister-in-law found it while downsizing! It’s filled with incredible details. This experience is a reminder to talk to your relatives – you never know what family history treasures might be hiding in their homes! But while you wait (hopefully not 40 years like me!), try searching for memoirs in the FamilySearch Digital Library. I recommend using the Advanced Search, putting ‘Memoirs’ in the Title field and a surname in the Keyword field.
7. Shopping for Family History at eBay
Time for some retail therapy – genealogy style! You might be surprised what family history treasures you can find on eBay.com. Think beyond records – I’m talking about artifacts! Over the years, I’ve snagged things like catalogs and tools from my husband’s great-grandfather’s hardware store, an old stock certificate signed by an ancestor, photos, yearbooks, postcards, even a tablecloth embroidered with family names and dates! My pro tip: Run searches for family names, ancestral businesses, or hometowns, and save those searches. eBay will then notify you when matching items pop up!
8. Giving Back: Birth Parent Finder
Navigating searches related to adoption often requires specialized help. BirthParentFinder.com is a resource dedicated to this, combining investigative expertise with DNA analysis to help reunite birth parents, siblings, and adopted children across the US. They offer a fantastic free blog with strategies and success stories, and they’ve recently launched the ‘Finding Family DNA with Chris and Jay’ podcast. Don’t miss the episode featuring Family Tree Magazine’s own Andrew Koch!
9. The New Chronicling America
Next up, a long-time favorite that just got a major upgrade: The Library of Congress’s Chronicling America newspaper site! It’s always been a go-to for free historical newspapers, but the new Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers collection website is fantastic. It boasts a completely redesigned interface built to handle its massive, growing collection. Key upgrades include better search refinement, an improved image viewer, and updated advanced search options. But one of the coolest new features, especially if you’re a visual person like me, is the ability to explore newspapers geographically. The interactive map lets you zoom into specific areas and click blue dots to see available digitized papers. Plus, there’s a time slider to filter by date. They add new content weekly, so keep checking back!
10. MyHeritage’s New OldNews.com
Broaden your newspaper horizons with MyHeritage’s dedicated newspaper site, OldNews.com. Launched recently, this site already contains hundreds of millions of pages from small-town papers to major international ones, effectively doubling the newspaper content previously on MyHeritage. And they plan to add millions more pages monthly, so it’s a rapidly growing resource!
11. Fashion History Timeline
Those old family photos hold more clues than you might think, especially in the clothes! Fashion can reveal social standing, hint at activities, and crucially, help date photos. To decipher these clues, check out the free Fashion History Timeline from the Fashion Institute of Technology. It’s an academic resource with searchable databases of publications on fashion history, perfect for pinpointing that unfamiliar style in Grandma’s portrait.
12. The American Immigrant Wall of Honor Database
Did your ancestors immigrate to the US? You might find their names – or add them yourself – to The American Immigrant Wall of Honor at Ellis Island. Originally started in 1990 for Ellis Island immigrants, it’s now open to honor any immigrant, regardless of when or where they arrived. You can search the existing database for free at the Statue of Liberty.org website and even add your own ancestor’s name to the wall through the Foundation’s heritage site.
How incredible would it be to find a lost photo of your ancestor online? Thousands of people have had that exact experience using the free photo archive, DeadFred.com! It’s a repository of user-submitted old photos, many unidentified or partially identified. Search by surname or location – you might get lucky! And if you find a photo of a direct ancestor that’s part of the DeadFred archive itself, they’ll often send you the original for free. It’s also a great place to upload your own mystery photos – maybe someone out there holds the key!
The David Rumsey Map Collection, already an amazing resource, recently launched a Machines Reading Maps tool. It has indexed 100 million words across 57,000 historical maps. Think about searching for terms relevant to your ancestors’ lives: ‘saloon,’ ‘lumberyard,’ ‘winery,’ ‘livery stable,’ or even a specific business name! The Advanced Search lets you combine text searches with map metadata. Hover over results to see the map snippet, and yes, all maps are free to download.
15. Primary Sources at JSTOR
Let’s enrich your family’s story with historical context. JSTOR is a vast digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. While you might not find your great-aunt’s birth certificate, you can find incredible materials that describe the world your ancestors lived in. For instance, I found the incredibly detailed WWII POW journal of Lt. Joseph ‘Ed’ Carter on JSTOR Daily. Reading accounts like this – journals, articles about local industries, social histories – can bring your ancestors’ experiences to life, even if they aren’t mentioned by name. Dive in and see what context you can uncover!
Bonus Tech Tips
Chrome Web Browser: Type @Gemini in the address bar, press the space bar, and then type your question. Press Enter on your keyboard for the answer!
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Images make your family history more vivid. But how can you find just the right pictures to illustrate your family stories? These short, free video tutorials help genealogists find images online for family history.
When it comes to sharing your family history, pictures are not only worth a thousand words: they’re priceless. A single image can convey an ancestor’s physical appearance, mood or attitude, living or working conditions, social environment, and more. Pictures catch the eye whether they are on coffee tables, hanging on the wall in frames, or shared with loved ones on social media, where they are oh-so-clickable.
So I was happy to get this email from Phyllis, asking for some tips on how to find images online for family history:
“Hi Lisa, I know you’ve told us before what some great resources are for locating historical photos and images. I’m looking for some from the Ragtime era (1895-1918). I don’t find much at the Library of Congress. Can you send me a few links to some of your podcasts that delve into where to find images? Thank you for all the hard work you do for the genealogy world.”
How to Find Images Online for Family History
Most recently, I shared some tips for finding images in the free Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 194. But I also recommend this series of short video tutorials, which show you exactly how to do this.
How to Find Images Online: Use Google Images
The first place I search online for images for family history is Google Images. Watch this brief tutorial video to see how to find images using your Google web browser:
If you want to use your tablet or smartphone to find images for family history, here’s another short tutorial just for you:
How to Find Images Online: Image Search in Google Books
When I am looking for pictures of people, places, buildings, historical events, maps, and other images that commonly appear in books, I also search Google Books separately for pictures that haven’t shown up in the main Google search results. You can do that, too! Here’s how:
After you’ve found images via Google Books, you’ll want to save them. Here’s one last quick video to show you how:
Using the tips given in the above video tutorials, I can run a Google search to answer Phyllis’s specific question. I’ll type ragtime era as a keyword phrase and enter the range of years, separated by two dots and no spaces, to tell Google to search for any numbers within that range. Then, as shown below, I’ll click Images to limit the results to pictures:
The Image search results include some fun photos, including a photo of a ragtime band, several sheet music covers, illustrations of “ragtime dress” and even a link to old video footage:
Click on an interesting-looking image to see a larger version and more details about it, including the website that’s hosting it. You’ll also see the options to click through to the webpage on which that image is found (“Visit page”), or to click through to the URL for that image (“View image”):
When I want to use an image, I will take one additional step: Click the TOOLS button and select Labeled for reuse from the Usage rights menu. This generally filters my results down to those that don’t have copyright restrictions on them (although it’s up to me to verify this and cite the image appropriately when I use it). Here’s what it looks like to filter my results to those labeled for reuse:
Unfortunately, in this case, when I do this, all search results disappear. If you want to use images for your own personal use, try the Labeled for noncommercial reuse option. Not all images that are copyright free or in the public domain will be marked, so if you don’t find what you need, go back to your original search results and look at individual images that you like to see whether any of them come from government, wiki, or other websites that commonly offer copyright-free images. Click through to read any image restrictions or use policies posted on the site, or contact the site for permission to use them. In this case, I do find several hosted by libraries, and I will focus on them.
One last tip: filter your search results again for Videos, instead of for Images. An entirely new set of search results will appear, largely from YouTube but also from other websites:
If the spirit and movement of ragtime during this time period is what you’re looking for, watch these videos! They may not work for you if you need static images for a book, but they’re great for sharing on your family history blog or in a social media post. Just click through to the video page, click Share and copy and paste the Embed code onto your site.
The Genealogy Gems YouTube channel is a vast resource. I invite you to visit, explore, and subscribe. In addition to tech tip video demos such as these, you’ll also find interviews with genealogy experts. research tips for maps, newspapers and other record types, how-to series for family history blogging, creating videos, and using Evernote for genealogy, family history craft tutorials and more! Here’s a tip: Use the search box to find what you’d like to watch. (Google search operators work in YouTube searches, too. Use them to zero in on the video or podcast episode you want.)
Bust a genealogy brick wall by learning to speak Google’s language. Proper use of Google’s basic search operators will have you plowing through walls in your research in nothing flat!
Genealogy information is sprinkled across the millions of websites on the web. Whether it’s a digital image of your great-great grandma on a distant cousins website or an out-of-print history book listed in the online card catalog in a library on the other side of the globe. Google can help you find it all.
Gaining access to that information is not as hard as you may think. I’d like to share a question I received recently from a Genealogy Gems Podcast listener, and show you how you can bust a brick wall by speaking Google’s language.
Here’s the email that I received from Ruth last week:
I’m sitting here listening to one of your free podcasts…I’m working, I’m listening, and I’m thinking…about my brick wall James Craig, what I know and what I’m trying to find out!
I know that James Craig was born about 1795-97 in New Jersey and was at Ft. Jesup, Louisiana in 1823, [and] that he was discharged in 1825. I researched New Jersey military records and found a James Craig, from Pittsgrove, Salem, New Jersey, who joined the Army [in] August 1820 for five years [and] he was sent to Fort Scott, Georgia. I read articles that state, when Fort Scott closed sometime around 1822/23, the men were sent to Fort Smith, Arkansas. Do you see the trail I’m following? It’s not hard to make the connection from Fort Smith, Arkansas to Fort Jesup, Louisiana. My problem is that I haven’t found any transfer papers!! So, how do I verify that James Craig from Pittsgrove, New Jersey is my 3rd great-grandfather. Is it possible that there are journals from the commanding officer of each encampment that might shed some light on this?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have on this long standing brick wall!
Tips to Bust a Genealogy Brick Wall
Ruth asked “Is it possible that there are journals from the commanding officer of each encampment that might shed some light on this?” I certainly think it is possible! I would suggest using Google to search the web because such items might be digitized online, or they might be listed on a library or archive website as being available at their location. Either way, you would gain valuable information on how to access the items.
Here’s an example of a search I would run:
This search is based on my Google Excellent Method Search Let’s break down the pieces of this search query:
The quotation marks tell Google that the word or phrase must be in every search result (in other words, they are mandatory.) When used around a phrase, that means the phrase must appear exactly as searched.
The asterisk tells Google there might be a word or two between the words in a phrase, such as a middle initial.
By putting OR between two versions of the phrases, such as last name first and first name first, you cover all your bases. Note that the word OR must be capitalized to work as a Google operator.
Finally, two numbers separated by 2 dots is called a “numrange search” and that tells Google a number that falls within that range must appear in each search result. And of course, four digit numbers represent years to genealogists!
Your Genealogy Google Guru
Google packs a powerful punch for genealogists. Let me be your Genealogy Google Guru and watch my video below for even more helpful tips and tricks. Remember to subscribe to my Genealogy Gems YouTube channel so you’ll get all my upcoming Google video tips. Happy searching!
I’ve previously recommended top websites especially for German translations on this blog: click here to check it out. Good luck to Sue, who commented after reading that post: “Great article! I can’t wait to try some of these websites. We have a large stack of German letters written to my husband’s mother that look impossible to read. Thank you!”
