lucky time Finding Your Roots With Help From Your Phone
Spending time in graveyards and libraries may not be everyone’s idea of summer fun, but for those interested in finding their roots, collecting information about one’s ancestors is a “family” vacation. Sure, genealogy sites have made researching one’s ancestral history much easier with digitized document archives, family-tree-building software and community forums. But not everything is online.
As you visit libraries, archives and cemeteries in pursuit of your roots, keep your smartphone or tablet at hand — it can help with translation tools, document scanners and more. Here are a few tips that can make your research trips more efficient.
Decipher TextOld newspapers, religious registries, grave markers and official government documents (either preserved in an analog archive or digitized online) can be invaluable resources for getting information about your ancestors. However, not every source may be in a language you know.
ImageBoth Google Lens, left, and Apple’s Translate tool in its iOS software can analyze text in images and try to translate it for you.Credit...Google; AppleGoogle Lens (available as an Android app or within the Google app for iOS) can isolate the words in an image and offer an onscreen translation. You can also copy the isolated text into a note or document.
ImageIt may not be perfect when it comes to converting old text in other languages to English, but Google Translate can give you a general idea of what was written.Credit...GoogleWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.
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