ROOTS & BRANCHES

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” column gave a shout out to several people who went above and beyond in helping me recently.

But I needed to save an entire column for Katherine Schober of SK Translations, who is an expert translator of German-language documents handwritten in the old script that was used into the 1900s.

In just the last few years, she’s become the choice even for others in the German genealogy translation field and has created a neat community around transcribing and translating such documents.

I had already known Schober was good … but recently I needed a 1700s probate document from Germany translated, penned in an awful script with legal and even some feudal terminology in it. I knew my ancestor Friedrich Winter was mentioned in it but after literally days of struggling with it, I turned it over to Schober. She admitted it “tough” … which to her meant it took a whole 2 hours to produce a perfect transcription and translation!

Schober’s community revolves around paying a modest monthly fee for a Premium Membership to be in her “club,” so to say, and you get to choose your level and even change it from month to month as your needs change.

For $3.99 a month, the Bronze members get an exclusive monthly article with translation tips. Silver members ($7.99 a month) get the exclusive monthly article but also to the entire archive of members-only articles, a download of Schober’s vital records guide for births, marriages and deaths, and a guaranteed spot in Schober’s webinars.

But if you’re wanting a boot-camp experience in solving script, Schober’s Premium Gold Membership at just $17.99 is the ticket. It includes all the other levels’ benefits but adds an “Ask-the-Translator Hour,” Schober’s weekly “office hour” for German genealogists.

Say you are transcribing your ancestor’s record, but cannot figure out the German village listed under the “place” column. Or you want to decipher the bride’s maiden name, but those letters just don’t seem to be making any sense to you. Or maybe you can’t find your ancestor’s occupation in a dictionary, and you’re at a loss where to go from there.

Gold Members post a copy of the record in a private Facebook group and Schober holds court each week at 1 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays. Members—who stretch around the world!—can post the record in advance if they’re not available then.

Everyone in the Gold Member community is able to view the records to learn from each other. And at the end of each session, Schober posts a summary of “things we learned” from the questions asked during that hour, a favorite that helps members learn new words for future research.

 You can sign up for your subscription at https://sktranslations.com/

Schober was recently a “special guest star” on Shamele Jordon’s “Genealogy Quick Start” internet program on which I am a “regular” with Michael John Neill. The entire program, including Schober’s quick start for transcribing foreign language documents, can be seen at the URL, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xw2-4r5T3U