Week 10: Translation (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2023 Version)

The theme for Week 10 is “Translation.” Would any of your ancestors have needed someone to translate for them? Have you had to work with records in a language other than your own? No matter the language, it’s good time to write! Click here to check out all the themes for2023.

I have come across German in my research and it was a class I took in High School. I know some basic words such as Born is Geboren and Died is Gestorben. The month of may is Mai and the month of March is März. These items come in quite handy when looking at some of the older gravestones in my research along with some of the documents.

However, with today’s technology, all we need is a Translate app on our phone. Allow the app to access our phone camera and point the phone (camera) towards the gravestone and it will translate the stone. Of course, the stone needs to be readable.

While researching my mother’s step great-grandfather, John Thielke. I found that he appears in German newspapers that were published in Watertown, Wisconsin. My guess is that there was a strong German presence in Watertown. The 1900 US Census, states he could read and write, so I wonder if he became bilingual?

John was born on Sep 21, 1839 in Germany. His Baptism record is found on Ancestry and of course it’s written in German, and the handwriting if very challenging to read. Plus, the Translate app doesn’t work very well for sloppy handwriting. This is one reason; you should transcribe the document. How do you transcribe a document you don’t understand the language? You transcribe it with the letters you see and it will end up being in a different language. Then I can use the Translate App on that typed transcribed record. Fingers crossed that I can truly make out the letters, because a double S is written as a strange B letter.

John came to America in 1857. On Oct 27, 1863 he married Wilhelmina Buss in the Town of Melford, Jefferson County, Wisconsin. They had 10 children, of which 7, all girls survived to adulthood. He belonged to the German Methodist Episcopal Church. John died on May 16, 1903 in Watertown, Jefferson County, Wisconsin, USA.

I was lucky, that I took German in High School. I am also lucky that I started my genealogy journey when I was in my late teens and thus kept that little German to English dictionary. Don’t let foreign languages stop your research since we have Google Translate on our computers and many Translate apps to choose from for our phones.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!