One of the biggest challenges I have found in researching my family
history is when I find myself faced with researching in another
language. I'm sure this is a fairly common problem - there would be
very few of us who have 100% English ancestors. And even is you do,
eventually you will start to find old documents and records written in
Latin - assuming you are lucky enough to trace your family far back
enough.
Currently among my ancestors I have a branch
who came from Germany - and I find my one year of high school German is
simply not enough when working with many of the documents I have which
are written in German. Google translate is a huge help when I am
drafting letters, visiting German websites and so on, but many of the
old documents I have are hand written, and it simply cannot translate
them for me. I sit there with my English-German dictionary and work
through the document word by word, writing out an English copy,
frequently muttering away to myself as I work. At least my year of
study - so many years ago now - helps a bit.
The
further I go back, the more the old hand written documents I find look
like another language, even when they are written in English.
Handwriting can be a challenge because not only has the English language
evolved over history, spelling changed, the way we abbreviate words
changed, just being able to interpret someone's unique style of writing
can be a mystery and challenge in and of itself. Add in some fading of
the ink or damage to the document itself, and some old handwriting may
as well be in another language for all the sense it makes to me on the
first read.
Whether translating another language or
simply deciphering old English that may as well be another language, I
find the key is to go slowly, understand what the document itself is
about, re-write the text myself letter by letter, even reading aloud can
help me comprehend the details. And throwing in a good dose of
patience helps too!
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