Family History for Non-English Speakers

Genealogists or family historians are usually not well integrated into the larger history centered community. Earlier this year, in March of 2016 The Church News reported about the Church History Symposium jointly organized by Brigham Young University and the Church History Department. Quoting from an article by R. Scott Lloyd, a Church News staff writer in an article entitled, "Presentations Examine Global Reach of Church:"

How The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is adjusting to meet the needs of an international membership was the theme this year of the annual Church History Symposium jointly organized by Brigham Young University and the Church History Department. 

The two-day symposium, titled “The Worldwide Church: The Global Reach of Mormonism,” began Thursday, March 6, on the BYU campus in Provo with a full day of scholarly presentations and an evening keynote speech by Terryl Givens, professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond in Virginia and a prolific and popular author on intellectual topics about Mormonism.

It is unlikely that any dedicated genealogists who were not also involved in the history community were even aware of this event. But the concerns expressed in the keynote by Professor Givens apply equally to the Church's genealogical community.

For example in Provo, Utah there are 18 Stakes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nine of those Stakes have Spanish speaking wards. In addition, there also Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Sign Language wards. As I visit wards throughout the Church in the United States, I often note a significant Spanish speaking population in surprising places around the country.

As an integral part of the Church and its teachings, genealogy should be viewed in the context of the global church. All of those working on the FamilySearch.org website should be aware that the website is availabile in the following languages:

In case you cannot recognize the names of the languages, they are German, Portuguese, English, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

Here is what the FamilySearch.org website looks like in Chinese:

Perhaps you were not aware that the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki is also found in the following languages:

The languages are German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Chinese.

In those areas where there are non-English speaking people, the Church leaders should be particularly careful to provide support for family history in the languages spoken by members of their wards and stakes.