Online Translation Services

If you are tracing family to non-English countries, you may find yourself lost in translation. The following websites offer free translation in many of the major languages.

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SDL International Free Professional Translation (http://www.freetranslation.com/)

Along with the traditional Spanish, French, German and Italian, this service also translates Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Norwegian, simplified and traditional Chinese and Japanese. You can translate up to 750 words at a time.


Babel Fish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/)

The granddaddy of online translators does all of the above languages as well as Greek and Korean. You can translate up to 150 words at a time. The site also allows you to translate webpages by typing the URL into the text box.

Organize Your Book Collection!

I've discovered an interesting website called LibraryThing (www.librarything.com) that lets you catalogue your private book collection and lets you use tags to organize them. It's as easy as typing in a book title and then searching Amazon.com, the Library of Congress or sixty other world libraries. Once you find and choose the edition you want, LibraryThing dumps the cataloguing info into the record.

You can share your catalogue with other book lovers and browse their collections. Users can post reviews and get recommendations from other members. You can also join or create discussion groups. The website connects people based on the books they read and share.

LibraryThing is a free service for the first 200 books catalogued. Anything over that number incurs a quite reasonable fee of $10 annually or $25 for a lifetime membership.