Foreign Language Headstones

Question

Hi all,

So I when on a photo trip to my local cemetery today and took a bunch of photos of Cyrillic headstones and (I suspect) Chinese headstones. I’ll be the first to admit my foreign language skills are non-existant  (other than some French). I’d love to post these photos but would love any tips on how others deal with foreign language headstones.

Comments

Thanks for the kick in the pants Robin, I meant to cover this in the next Cemeteries Newsletter, but I have been so tied up IRL that I haven't worked on it yet. I guess I need to get back to it!

Answer 1

You could possibly copy the script and enter it into Google translate or your prefered translate software.

Answer 2

The easiest is to post a photo and ask others to translate. 

Or you can use Google Photos, it will find the text and determine the script and give you text in that language.Then you can copy that and go to Google translate to convert it to English. Doesn't work so well on handwriting, I don't know if they have old scripts in there yet, like Old Church Cyrillic.

Answer 3

I think Cyrillic headstones are relatively easy to transcribe to the Latin alphabet, at least compared to other scripts and as long as it isn't cursive. It is a alphabet, it works about the same as our alphabet and there are many letter that are about the same (but watch out for false friends like Р = R).

You could use a transcription table like on this page.