Your previous reply didn't sound harsh to me, and thanks for checking! You can't be too careful. My paternal ancestors came from the previous Prussian province of "Posen", but if you machine translate a sentence from German to English with "Posen" in it, it won't make sense, as "Posen" is also the German word for fishing "bobbers" and the machine translation will substitute "floats" (or sometimes "poses" as in "actors in various poses") for "Posen". For my contact letter, I used InterTran http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran which can have poor (or no) response sometimes, as it isn't provided with enough servers to handle all the traffic. I suspect this may be intentional, so we will buy their software. I recommend that when using a machine translation, to use short simple sentences, eliminating idioms. It helps to repeat the ideas using different words, so that if one sentence is ruined by a couple of wrongly translated words, the other sentence will help carry the thought from context. And always include the English version, it can't hurt and it may help. James > -----Original Message----- > From: Mary Lawrie [SMTP:marylawrie@optusnet.com.au] > Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 5:16 AM > To: CROATIA-L@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [CROATIA-L] Proof needed of this contact letter > > After reading what I sent to you earlier it sounded a bit harsh, sorry, I > do not read Croatian but passed your email onto someone at work who looked > at it and I had hoped would change some things but he wrote back: "The > translation is a bit weird but the basic intent of the letter should be > understood by someone who can only read, write and speak Croatian" > > Also if you send the English version Im sure that someone (younger in the > family) will be able to understand that as well. > > Good luck in your findings and I hope you get a favourable response. > > Frank also has letters written in Croatian if you need to send to Churches > or Archives. If you need a copy he will forward this to you. > > > BTW was it Trans Translator you are using? I've used this programme for > certains words I want to find out but never used it for actual sentences. > > Mary >