Did you know that the FamilySearch Research Wiki provides Genealogical Word Lists for localities that have records written in foreign languages? I first discovered this when looking at Lutheran Church Records in Pennsylvania that were written in German. The German Word List was a valuable resource as I tried to make sense of these records. The word lists for each language provide general information about the language as well as lists of key words and common words that will be used in genealogical records. I have used the Polish Word List and the Latin Word List over the last couple of weeks as I have been doing some research for my Poland Project.
Other great resources are FamilySearch’s Handwriting Help Pages. For many languages, the FamilySearch Wiki provides a sheet with alphabet examples as well as a handwriting practice page. These are great tools to help decipher unfamiliar handwriting on records.
To access any of these aids, simply log in to FamilySearch, click Search on the menu bar, then choose Research Wiki. Type the name of the locality you are researching, and the Word Lists and Handwriting Helps for any languages associated with that locality will be displayed in the Research Tools section of the page.
Another great place to get help with foreign languages is Google Translate. I’ve used this tool extensively this week when looking at lists of Polish records and trying to determine which were the church records. I copied and pasted the title of each record set into Google Translate until I found the records I was looking for.
With these tools, researching and transcribing records written in a foreign language becomes much less daunting!
