It has come to our attention that we have some English transcribers going into foreign cemeteries and placing only dates in the transcription box. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS!!
When only dates are placed in the transcription box this makes it nearly impossible for people to do searches for family members, as the pins are set as transcribed, but will not be set with a name. If you can't read or write in Greek, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, or Polish please do not attempt to transcribe these languages. These are very tricky languages to transcribe and Polish, for example, has many diacritics that must be done correctly or words lose meaning.
Swedish, Norwegian, French, Spanish, and German also have Diacritics. If you are familiar with them such as the German Umlaut, or the Spanish Accent mark, and know how to use the alt keys, go ahead and translate. If you do not even know what an accent or diacritic is, please do not try to transcribe records in foreign languages.
If you are in an English speaking country and come across a headstone in a foreign language, please mark it accordingly if you can tell what language it is. If you have no idea what language this is in, please skip the transcription by clicking "next". This will allow another user to view the stone and figure out the language. Please do not red-flag foreign language stones, as this will take them out of the transcription queue, and send these back to the photographer.
If you are familiar enough with a language to recognize it but do not feel comfortable transcribing it, you can mark this in another language for another transcriber. This is done on the main transcription page by clicking on the blue box in the right-hand corner of the screen that has a Chinese looking mark and an A. You can click on this button and set a language...only do this though if you are familiar enough with a foreign language. Let me give you a couple of examples:
Example 1: You took a Chinese class in school and can recognize Chinese, but don't write it or understand it well...you know Chinese well enough to click on the set language button.
Example 2: If you grew up with a Swiss Grandfather and took a couple of years of German. Don't speak the language well, but can recognize it and know how and where to find the German Umlaut on a keyboard...you can go ahead and transcribe German Records.
Example 3: If you only know German by what it sounds like on a WWII movie...or have only gotten Chinese fortune cookies at Panda Express to understand Chinese... you probably should leave foreign languages alone for now.... ;)
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