MyHeritage Introduces Global Name Translation™

How would you like to search in English for your Russian ancestors and have the search done in Russian with the results translated back into English for your convenience? This is how the new technology from MyHeritage.com works. Quoting from a blog post entitled, "New Feature: Global Name Translation™ Technology."

This innovation now makes it even easier to discover your global roots. The technology automatically translates names found in historical records and family trees from one language into another, at very high accuracy, generating all plausible translations, to facilitate matches between names in different languages. In addition, a manual search on MyHeritage's SuperSearch, will return results in other languages, automatically translated into the language of the query.

The post goes on to explain,

The technology covers given names and surnames and can tackle names previously encountered in the past, in addition to new names not seen before. It also utilizes extensive dictionaries built by MyHeritage to cover synonyms and nicknames. 

For example, a search for Alessandro (Alexander in Italian) will also find "Саша" (the Russian form of Sasha, a popular nickname for Alexander) with its corresponding translation into the language of your search.

How is this done? Here is a more technical explanation:

Global Name Translation™ is built on advanced algorithms and based on MyHeritage’s massive multilingual and international database of 6 billion family tree profiles and historical records. The technology is also integrated into our matching technologies, so you’ll begin receiving matches, with very high accuracy, translated on your behalf. 

If a user from Greece, with family tree data entered in Greek, is related to a user in Israel with family tree data entered in Hebrew, MyHeritage will be able to connect them by matching the names in both languages, and show the two users how their family trees overlap, leading to exciting family reunions as never before. 

Anyone with a family tree at MyHeritage can use our new Global Name Translation™ technology. Begin by enjoying automatic matches or use SuperSearch, our online database of billions of historical records, to find your ancestors from around the world. 

Our first version successfully translates names among English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Greek, Hebrew, Polish, Czech, Russian and Ukrainian. The next version, currently in development, will add Chinese and Japanese, and additional languages will follow.

This new technology is really a major advance, something we don't see every day.