Hi Keith Thanks for the advice. I will try translating a short article from Dutch as well as Afrikaans to see how it will turn out. Some of the translations were weird. I had one article with a woman names Catherina, and the Afrikaans translation changed her name to Margarita in every case. In another article there was the word Nederlands, and the translation programme changed the word to Canada, perhaps because it sees I am in Canada. Unfortunately with my laptop, because I do not have a numeric keypad, the Alt numbers do not work, with the numberic lock on or off, but I did find the character map and have used that to add the symbols in my text. Thanks again. Sonia Message: 5 Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:14:44 -0400 From: "Keith Meintjes" <umfundi@usa.net> Subject: Re: [SOUTH-AFRICA] symbols in SA genealogies To: <south-africa@rootsweb.com> Message-ID: <322PHoXNS2816S03.1313450084@web03.cms.usa.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sonia, When using Google translate, try Dutch => English as well as Afrikaans => English. For symbols, it is somewhat a matter of trial and error. In Word, try Insert ... Symbol and see if the symbol you want is in the table that is displayed. Otherwise, do a Google search on ASCII Code for some sort of explanation. To get an ASCII (or extended ASCII) symbol, hold down the ALT key and then type the 3 or 4 digit code on the numeric key pad. Release the ALT key, and voila! Baptised (wavy equal): 247 Died (dagger): 0134 Divorced (divide): 0247 Euro: 0128 British pound: 163 You can also find a vast number of Unicode symbols. To enter a Unicode symbol, type the 4-digit number. Then, highlight (select) the number, and type ALT+X. For instance, 2248 is the baptised symbol. There is also a way to type HTML characters, but we won't go there! Keith