Using Google Translate in Day to Day Research

Online research is likely a daily activity for most family history researchers and it is common to run into entries, documents and Websites in a language foreign to the researcher. Although there are several online translation services, Google Translate is one of the most convenient and one of the most likely to easily give a useful translation. Google Translate supports 34 languages.

The instructions for the use of Google Translate are simple; copy and paste your text into the Google Translate gadget and click the translate button. Single words will often come up with a number of alternative translations. One of the options is to detect language. If you do not know the language of the word or phrase, Google Translate will automatically detect the language and give you a possible translation.

If you are familiar with using an iGoogle page, you can insert a gadget on your iGoogle page for Google Translate and have the program always available.

Although we have had some discussion about the appropriateness of the end product translations, if you are trying to understand terms in a document or discover the term for "baptism," or other similar terms in a record, you may wish to try this Google program.