Advice to translate pages from a Polish book into English? (Genealogy)

I am doing genealogy work and have located 3 books written about the actual towns of my family origins. The 3 books are written in Polish, so I can not read them. Does anyone know if there is a computer program where I can Scan a page from a Book into the computer and then get it translated from the program? I do not mind purchasing a program to do this, IF there is one available. I have not been successful in locating such a program.

I am happy to have these precious books in my possession, and need to figure out a way to get several of the pages translated. I do not expect to translate the whole books, just several pages from each book. I do not have access to a Polish speaking person, that could read & translate so much information. It would be too much to try to type in several pages to get Google to translate it. Also, Google has translated some of the town website pages that contain a great deal of Historical information-and the translation is quite poor in my opinion, and close to worthless!

I hope that someone else has dealt with this problem and found a good solution they are willing to share with me.

Thank you,
Mary

have you checked the town websites to see if they have english language pages.

if you tell us the names of the towns we might be able to help you more.

i've found a lot of history of this sort on jewish genealogy sites and Pol/Am genealogy sites.

it might be possible to get the same info, but from a different book. name those towns

I can give you the name of a Genealogist who may be able to help if you wish. Where are you located?

Check out professional translator into English from Polish, Latin, Russian & German: andywbuffalo@yahoo

You could just use standard letter recognition software to make an editable .pdf (or Word .doc) and then feed the results into google translate.

Alternatively you could just scan the pages you want done and I can recommend you a couple of decent translators here in Warsaw to do the work.

Google translate is terrible with Polish (better with some other, more commonly used languages due to its type of machine translation). I translate Polish (and German) into English professionally. Let me know if you need my help at all.

If such a piece of software did exist, it would be wonderful. Unfortunately, machine translation is still many years away from being able to provide that service.

If you need a translation, and can scan a page of one of your books, I can offer a sample translation with a quote for further translations, if you need it.

To all who offered advice from Wroclaw through Richfilth,

Thank you for taking the time to offer your translation services as well as other advice. I have noted your offers to translate for me or refer someone that you know who can do the translations. As I reviewed my query, I said I had "Several Pages"-upon consideration that would be a very Conservative estimate of what I do need translated. Again, although I don't need 100% of each book translated--There is a very significant percentage of each book. I do think it would just be too costly, at this time. However, I will keep a note of the offers!

To Wroclaw--Books about the villages/towns of My interest are:

"Golcowa" by Benedykt Gajewski--I have been to the Golcowa website and they do have an extensive "history" listed on the site, I suspect some of it came from this book. This is the one that was translated by Google and is entirely of POOR Quality translation! I was able to purchase the same Golcowa Book that they show on the site and actually make available for viewing. That is one of the books I want an accurate translation from.

#131 Pages in book, plus several Photo captions.

Old Village "Stara Wies" by Stanislav Dydek #471 pages in the book

Sześć Wieków Brzozowa (South Eastern Pl) #313 pages in the Book--This is the actual town that my 'Duplaga" line came from. I have traced them back to the mid 1770's in the Parish "Church of the Transfiguration". So ofcourse I am interested in the full history of Brzozow and would like to know most of what this book says!

These 3 books are from the exact region where about 100 Duplaga's emigrated from in the early 19th Century. I have already been to wikipedia as well as the Jewish sites to see what I can learn about these villages/towns--but I feel that the content of these Books are most likely to give me detailed information about these locations.

I might add that I'm in the process of contacting the Regional Museum in Brzozow, to see if they can assist me in any way.

They have publised two of these books and I am suggesting that they consider a way to make their historical work available in the English language! They also have a few other books I plan to purchase!

To Markskibniewski--I am in the Los Angeles area of California- USA

Are there any Computer Software creators out there??? Here is an area that needs to be addressed!!!! I'll be the First Client!
I am grateful to all of you for your kind assistance,
Mary

OUR LADY OF THE BRIGHT MOUNT CHURCH
Los Angeles, CA 90018
3424 W. Adams Blvd
(323)734-5249
Polish Mass: Saturday 5:00 pm; Sunday 9:00; 12:00 am

This was a quick google search but I am sure there are many more sources of Polish speaking individuals in your area. When I spoke with the priest in my local area they were extremely helpful. My grandparents were married in a Polich Catholic church in Ny.

Bear in mind, Machine Translation was the whole purpose of inventing computers in the first place, 70 years ago. Computational Linguistics has grown into an enormous field since then, but as Google's efforts show, even the enormous power of the Cloud can't make sense of human-to-human language translation. So you'll have to keep your fingers crossed that an enormous leap in translation occurs sometime in the next decade.

My translators and I are more than happy to tackle a project like these books for a very reasonable price, in case you change your mind.

Richfilth, Markskibniewski, Sarahk & Harry,

I do not have any idea how to send a "private message" on this forum, so that our emails are not posted. Please enlighten me-IF it is possible.

If each of you would like to provide your email addreses so that I can contact you for estimates for translations, I would appreciate it!

Thanks again for everyone's assistance,
Mary

Yes it is possible but you need to first register and then make a certain number of posts (I think it might be five).

Well if you visit the church or call I am sure you will be able to have someone there help you. It would be free minus a bit of gas and your time. If you would like to contact a pro that I have used and highly recommend here is his link: polishgenealogy.com.pl

Good luck

Mary:
I'd like to know if you had any success with translation of book about Golcowa. My maternal family is from there and I would like to know more about its history. I do not read Polish. Do you have any connection to following family names?

Tomon
Obloj
Herbut
Stanko
Richard

To Markskibniewski,
Thanks for the reference to Our Lady of Bright Mount with contact info. It is about an hours drive on crazy Calif. freeways and I don't travel them anymore! The problem is that I have over 25 Polish books now and it isn't the same as asking someone to translate just One letter. I trust that some day I will stumble upon a Solution that will work.

I did speak with a Vice President of a Translation software company about a month ago, and she told me that even what they currently have is not so good for the "Polish" language-however she said that with the New "Cloud" technology, she expects that in about 4 years or so, we will see a Vast improvement on the Polish as well as other language translation software.

To panpivo,

No, I have not gotten the book or any part of it translated. The Golcowa website used to have a long history page that was poorly translated by Google-you may still find it there, but I'm not sure if it is or not. I think this history may have been from that green book on the first page.(which is the same book I have)

In the limited records that I've seen from that area, Tomon & Obloj are fairly common in Golcowa & the surrounding villages. I'm from Cleveland and there is a Tomon & Sons funeral home that has been in business forever and they have serviced many members of my family. I've even wondered if the original owners were friends with my grandfather in Poland, because I know their family came from there. A genealogy friend of mine had a Stanko in his public family tree that is posted on Ancestry.com-unfortunately he passed away in June 2012.

The Rector of the Golcowa parish was difficult to deal with in getting records. He only allowed a few entries. Have you tried to get hold of the LDS films of that area--I'm fairly certain they were photographed and it would give you access to a lot more. Someone had told me that once you locate the correct village of origin, it is wise to search the 10 surrounding villages as well. I have found this to be true and helpful-some people did re-locate as well as inter-marry from neighboring villages.

My thanks to everyone for their kind suggestions,
Mary

I was in contact with my Obloj relatives in Golcowa, but because of their very limited English plus lack of photos or records I was not able to learn much. I also had email contact with an Obloj living in London who originally was from Domaradz, a town next to Golcowa. He checked with his family who didn't know the connection between families. So as you said, the name is common in the area. My Tomon relatives evidently moved away after WW II and I have no record of them after that.

Thanks for your info.