Oh, how much easier my life would be if my grandfather hadn’t left Sweden to make his home in Australia. If I’d been born in Sweden I would probably be at least bilingual, but sadly, I only speak English. That’s assuming I would have been born at all. I share my grandfather’s Swedish DNA, but also that of my Australian-born grandmother, who met and fell in love with my handsome Swedish grandfather and bore his ten children. If Grandfather had married a Swedish girl, in Sweden, would I have materialised into a Swedish version of who I am today?
But, Grandfather didn’t marry a Swedish girl, and he didn’t stay in Sweden. So here I am, a mere monolingual Aussie, trying desperately to translate the Swedish documents that tell of Grandfather’s other life, and therefore, the lives of my Swedish ancestors.
Being born in 1950 gives me a bit of an edge on the translation journey. My (then) teenaged children embraced technology in the eighties and shoved me head-first into the world of computers, so I am no stranger to the Internet and search engines in today’s modern world. And with the beauty of the Internet comes a diverse range of apps and websites that can solve a couple of monolingual problems.
- Learning a second language can be undertaken in the comfort of your own home via any number of apps.
- Duolingo is just one of the apps available that is super-affordable, and a fantastic method of learning Swedish. Admittedly, I’m only up to the part where I could ask for a drink of water in Sweden, but I’m working on it.
- Most Swedish archival websites provide a handy little tab at the top that says ‘English‘., so I can select the English version of the page.
- But, there are a lot of words on most documents that escape the translation parameters and therefore are stuck in Swedish.
- There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of websites that offer translation from one language to another.
- This is my preferred method for expediency in translating documents since none of the Swedish documents I’ve found so far mention ‘drink of water’.
- I type the Swedish word into the translator, and it gives me the English equivalent.
- A Swedish keyboard is available as an alternative when entering Swedish text.
- Don’t ask me how I found it because I was born in 1950, and just remembering what I had for breakfast a few hours after the event is a mammoth challenge, so I can’t remember how or where I found the keyboard.
- A Google search should help you locate the alternate keyboard, which can be easily accessed alongside the good old English keyboard used for everything else.
- I accidentally found an easy way to toggle the Swedish keyboard (there’s a lot to be said for being a bit slow) on my trusty Mac laptop:
- when typing a letter that needs a Swedish accent, like ö, I hold down the letter o until a little box pops up, giving the choice of accents to use.
I imagine the alternate keyboard idea works for other languages as well.
If future generations are reading this post they will no doubt chuckle at how quaint this all is. I imagine years from 2023 you are all microchipped at birth, right? There’ll be no need to search for DNA matches and old documents because everything you think, say or do will be embedded on the microchip the instant you think, say or do it, right? Heck, perhaps I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but you get the picture, I’m sure.
So, when it comes to translation I reckon I’ve got a pretty good handle on it, albeit, cumbersome handle, back here in March 2023 (we haven’t been microchipped yet – that service is only available to our domesticated pets, oh, and some endangered wildlife). So, until we are microchipped I’ll continue to:
- learn Swedish
- select the ‘English’ tab on Swedish websites
- seek out an online translation service website
And if all else fails, I’ll phone a Swedish neighbour, but I’ve avoided that step because most of my research is done way outside normal waking hours, as is the case with most family historians I suspect, so my translation needs will continue to be met online.
The Family History Vault 