Searching in Cyrillic

[kaima]

OK, for those of us who are not specialists in five or more languages, our searches for locations, ancestors and documents sometimes leaves us in a tough situation. Sometimes it is even tougher when we need to write a place name or family name in Cyrillic. Here is your out:

www.translit.ru

I only glanced at it, but that was enough to make me add it to my favorites for the rare occasion when I run across a word in Cyrillic that I want to do a search on, where copy and paste won't do.

For possible crude translation of some Russian (or other languages to English) there is another site that I have not looked at, but may also be handy:

www.multitran.ru translator.

Now I have a translation program for English-Slovak, and it comes in handy for crude work. The main thing is to look at alternative meanings and chose the one that best fits the context of what you are looking at.


Kai

[jimpres]

Kai,

Most of the records here in Skrwilno around 1880 are in Cyrillic. Just knowing the Cyrillic alphabet and the Polish towns helps get the translations done. I'll have to check out this site more later.

Jim

[piwo]

An Excellent resource kaima!

I have a wonderful chart that shows English, German and Polish equivalents for all Russian characters, both printed and cursive. I got it at the LDS library in Salt Lake City, and I've "cleaned it up" using Microsoft PAINT. I'd like to post it as a picture, or make it available as a reference tool on this forum, but am afraid that would violate copyright laws. This is an area I have no expertise.

Printed Russian was little help for me by itself since all the church records were written in cursive, and only a few characters bear any resemblance to their printed counterpart. If you will be searching church documents, you will need to be able to decipher handwritten Russian. Then, when converting to printed, enter it in a tool to translate. Here’s an example:


This is a very GOOD quality document: I have many examples of far worse. This document clearly identifies the groom, Francieszek Harasim, born in Wronowo, parents Stanisław Harasim and Teofila Cuper, married couple Harasim living in Mikołajówek.
The 6th word, is the Russian word for village. First I needed to translate the handwritten to printed, and then used an online resource, like Kaima posted above.

It's quite a game, but the rewards are worth every second spent.

I will try and contact the Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City and see if they will allow the document to be posted: with proper acknowledgements of course.

[kaima]

Great! I am glad to see there is a need that this "on line typewriter" may fulfill. Jim, have you seen the reference to old maps that I posted a week or so ago? I was thinking of you & some of the older features that may be revealed about the area you are moving into today. They may give some new, historical perspective to some geographic features. For the rest of us, they could help show, for example, the stability or shrinking of natural preservation areas or forests in the last 70 years.

Piwo, the cursive is something I have not had to worry about - yet. It is intimidating. Even the easier Old German cursive can be challenging, and all of this complicated by changes in standard orthography over time, changes that ho one but scholars remember took place. So far I have only encountered the Latinized version of Rusyn used in old Hungary. I fear there is a whole new world out there that I am not aware of as yet!

You are probably way ahead of me on the Cyrillic, but these may be worth a glance, or may be helpful to someone else:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Ukrainian
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian
That there are so many different "official" ways to transliterate Cyrillic demonstrates WHY the alphabet was invented in the first place - to easily represent the sounds common in Slavic languages that are so difficult to render in the Latin based alphabet.


Then there is the work our Jewish neighbors have done
www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/translit.htm

When I lived in Germany it was interesting when I had to help people read the cursive in another language. My sister has beautiful American writing, nice and well formed "rounded" letters. They were impossible for a German to read; the counterpart to this is that the German "pointed" script was equally impossible for an unpracticed American to read! The German would often look like waves on a choppy sea, written "mine" might look like "iiiii" without the dots on the i's. Somehow I learned to read it, through necessity, perhaps.

Kai

[piwo]

Kaima,
I hadn't seen the Jewish Records Indexing - Poland link before: it's quite good. It does what the chart I got from the LDS Library does: shows equivalent characters in Russian, English, Polish and German. Invaluable for those digging through church records, which in many cases, are the best (and only) that survive.

This is an excellent reference page and one that should be indexed if one will be researching where documents will, or likely to be, written in Russian. All official and church "post 1868" documents in Russian controlled lands will be in Russian.

Good stuff..

[jimpres]

Kai,

I did bookmark the map site.
And yes, the Jewish site is a good resource for searching as well. But I think it only deals with Jewish records.

Jim

[piwo]

jimpres said:

Kai,

I did bookmark the map site.
And yes, the Jewish site is a good resource for searching as well. But I think it only deals with Jewish records.

Jim

Jim,
I like the Jewish site because of the easy cross reference to cursive and printed letters in Russian, Polish and German: not for it's "people" records. You probably don't have the need for such, but I think many researchers will find it very helpful. That was my interest in that particular site.
Regards,
john

[piwo]

I sent LDS library an email, which they sent back a automated reply. I haven't heard from them personally yet.