<It's times like this that I wish the Universal Translator from Star Trek was available to me!> Pat, There's no Scotty to beam us up, but there are free on-line dictionaries, translators, etc. Caveat Emptor: No electronic translator as good as a native speaker of the language. German/English Dictionary http://www.lhs-lt.de/en/products/t1woerter.htm German/English Dictionary http://www.iee.et.tu-dresden.de/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/wernerr/search.sh German/English Dictionary http://dictionaries.travlang.com/GermanEnglish/ German to English genealogical symbols and abbreviations: http://w3g.med.uni-glessen.de/gene/misc/gensig.html Alta Vista Translator http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/ German to English Translator http://web.nstar.net/~dwat6911/language.htm *German to English Translator http://users.rootsweb.com/~deuhes/Hessen/language.htm Internet translation service [email protected] Automatically translate the English content of your Web site, e-mail, documents, etc. into French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Portuguese for free. http://www.freetranslation.com German Letter Writing Guide http://www.familysearch.org/sg/LGGerman.html Language Translator. Provide the URL and this will translate a Web page. http://translator.go.com/ Translations - To look at pages in other languages, go to http://babelfish.altavista.com/ Translations http://www.nytimes.com/partners/babylon/ Translate single words or complete web page http://www.tranexp.com/InterTran.cgi Translation Servicive for Genalogists. This free translation service now has a page in English and is available in 23 languages at: http://translation.francegenweb.org/ Also, you will find the Hesse Rootsweb site good for many other things - like letters written in German that you can use to request information from archives in Germany. http://users.rootsweb.com/~deuhes/Hessen/index.htm Best of luck in your search. Curt