Never say NEVER. One should not blindly use the sites. To see how good/bad they are, cut/paste some German you have received into them and read the English that results. Now, to use them wisely, create very simple English sentences, simple in structure and in tense. Diagram it. If you have more than one long horizontal line, break it up. Submit this to the online translator. Then take the translation, your book of German grammar, your book of German verbs, and your big German dictionary, and make sure of what you will be sending. Be familiar with German genealogical vocabulary. You will have to be anyway if you are doing family history research that involves German heritage, whether in Germany or the USA. Your result will be acceptable. Contrary to popular opinion, it does not have to be perfect. The English you get from Germany seldom is and it works. Ok, German is a high context language and English a low context one. That just means use more simple sentences rather than less. - Michael On Jun 17, 2007, at 2:01 AM, prussia-roots-request@rootsweb.com wrote: > I'm sorry to say that this is totally in error and genealogists who > do not > speak German or Polish should NEVER use these mechanical > translations to > write correspondence to people in those countries. NEVER! NEVER, > EVER!