Sooner or later, almost every genealogist is going to work with foreign language documents. The Google Translate webpage, is a great free resource for small translations such as a paragraph here or there, or passages small enough to type into the translation text box. But what happens when that’s just not enough?

Copying and pasting text into the Google Translate web page works… but it interrupts your workflow. You have to open a new page for Google Translate, and then flip back and forth. In the illustration above, I was searching through dozens of Cyrillic-language archives. Google Translate’s extension let’s me work right on the page, so I don’t lose my place.

Note: I’m going to be using the Google Translate extension during my Internet Archive/Wayback Machine webinar on Saturday. Below is a sneak peek of what you’re going to see!

A browser extension is a small software add-on that installs into your web browser.

Think of them as tools that you attach to your browser to give it new abilities, such as password managers, ad blockers, or in this case, a translation tool. My examples are all in Google Chrome, but you can find extensions for all the major web browsers. Just search for the name of your browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc.) + the word “extensions” and you should get a list of extension programs that will work with your system.

Once installed, the Google Translate extension will be available as a small icon in your browser. In Chrome, it’s on the top right, while Safari has it on the top left. In the picture below, I’ve pointed it out – a small blue icon with the letter “G”.

Once it’s installed, it’s very easy to use. You can translate any text on the page that you are able to highlight. It won’t translate text in photos, but almost everything else is fair game. Here’s an example of me translating a passage from a book in the Internet Archives that deals with the history of Italian last names:

First – I highlight the portion of text I need to translate. This is shown in blue.

Second – I click on the blue extension button for the Google Translate extention (top right)

Third – The transcription & translation appears in the popup box.

If you’d like to see more about how the Google Translate extension works with the Internet Archive then join me Saturday at 2pm ET! You can find the event listing here.