Teaching Family History in a Non-English Evironment

I received the following very interesting and thought-provoking comment in response to a recent blog post.

Thanks for sharing your mission experiences. Since you are working in a Spanish branch, I wanted to ask you about training resources. I was recently called as a stake temple and family history consultant. We have a very active Spanish ward in our stake with the largest membership of any ward in the stake with very little family history participation. They have 2 consultants that are called, but the consultant do not have computers at home and are struggling to learn to use FamilySearch. I normally direct people to the Family History Guide since it's the best training resource available. I can translate the Family History Guide into Spanish, but most of the articles and videos it links to, as well as the images, are all still in English. I worry that this will be confusing as one of these consultants speaks very little English and does not know not much about the computer at all either, so I worry that if part of the information is in English and part in Spanish that she will get confused.
Are there are other resources out there specifically in Spanish that I could be using? Or have you found that the Family History Guide works okay? Or maybe I just sit down with these consultants enough times along with the people they are helping until they learn it better? Just not sure what the best thing to do is, would appreciate some input. They do have a computer lab in the building that they meet in so they do have computer they can use easily and I do speak Spanish, so that helps. 

There are a number of important issues raised by this rather extensive comment. I will attempt to answer each of the issues/questions raised.

Family History Training resources in a non-English language

The commentator is correct. The Family History Guide can be translated into the Google languages, but the links to videos and other resources are almost all in English. The Family History Guide is merely limited by resources, i.e. it is a free website and supported donations to a non-profit, tax-deductible organization, The Family History Guide Association. We have discussed translation, especially into Spanish, but progress will depend on the level of donations. Here is an example of how the problem is being addressed by The Family History Guide.

Choices
A. Sign in to FamilySearch and move around the Family Tree screen.
Summary
Note : If you do not have a free FamilySearch Account, read this article for instructions. (For a translation, click one of these links:   DE (German)   FR (French)   IT (Italian)   PT (Portuguese)   JA Japanese) For more help with your FamilySearch account, refer to Goal 13: Account.

You can change your basic FamilySearch.org Family Tree to any one of the languages. Of course, that does not help with the languages in the videos etc.  Unfortunately, Spanish is not one of the languages supported by FamilySearch for that particular link.

Unfortunately, unless the websites are also translated, you would have to rely on Google Translate, which doesn't work with videos.

Issues with computer skills plus issues with language skills

My experience is that many Spanish speaking units in the Church have extremely low family history participation. However, that is mainly due to lack of leader support and bi-lingual Temple and Family History Consultants. We do not try to teach the Spanish speakers family history, we simply try to help them research and work with the FamilySearch program. As they acquire computer skills and some language, they can begin to do research in the abundant Latin American records. However, most of them can fill in two or more generations merely by talking to their relatives. The key is identifying the parish where their family lived. FamilySearch is rapidly filling in many Latin American recordsets. We get excellent cooperation and results from one-on-one assistance and directly helping those with no reading and computer skills by using the Consultant Planner. Again, the key is the cooperation of the Branch or Ward leaders.

Teaching Spanish research skills

I started learning by reading every word of this book.

Ryskamp, George R. Tracing Your Hispanic Heritage. Riverside, Calif.: Hispanic Family History Research, 1984.

You can usually get a used copy on Amazon. I can see some used copies available on Amazon as I am writing this post. Of course, the book is in English, but all the examples are to Spanish language records and there are lots of helps with vocabulary in Spanish. Get the book and you have a complete course in Spanish language genealogy.

I took a BYU class from George Ryskamp and that was also a huge help.

Using the computer lab

Basically, what you need is a space that the Ward or Branch leaders will allow you to use to help people during the Sunday School time. You can make due with laptops and WiFi. But if you have a computer lab, all the better. The best case is access to a Family History Center. One unit in Provo actually left the chapel and went to a nearby Family History Center during Sunday School time. You can ask one or at most two people to come and get on to FamilySearch and begin putting their names in with help. Typing skills are nice but not absolutely essential. Yes, I sit there and type in their names and then research the names in the records. I let them click on the link to send the names to their Temple list even if they can't read or type. They are thrilled to take the names to the Temple.

The key seems to be the cooperation and support of the Ward or Branch leaders. Without their active support (or in some cases with their active opposition) it is almost impossible to have a unified effort. But we just keep helping people individually in their homes, at Family History Centers, anyplace and anytime we can find time to help them. With support, you will have a wonderful time working with them one by one.

I would like to be there when those who actively oppose family history meet their relatives in the life hereafter.

This works with languages where we have access to records online. You do need someone who knows the language to help those who are monolingual, however.