How can we easily see all the Norwegian/Danish information on the records in English? It seems only
It's very time consuming trying to translate the records to English manually.
Answers
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In most cases only the main information was indexed and it is still necessary to look at the original document. There is not a way to easily see all of the information in English as you have requested. Language and handwriting barriers are some of the main obstacles that you will face when doing your genealogy. The best way to overcome these obstacles is study and practice. I, for example, speak Danish which helps me considerably but even still, I am taking a Swedish Rosetta Stone course to help me better read documents in that language.
No matter how much technology progresses and speeds genealogy up, genealogy is and always will be complicated. It is a time consuming endeavor, and its supposed to be. The goal of the genealogist is to figure out things that no living person on earth already knows and to restore knowledge that has been lost, usually for centuries.
So just keep plugging away, you are on the right track.
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Well done Tanner, perfectly stated. Kristy if you need help many are delighted to teach you and provide what you need. Part of the joy of family history is learning something new and even difficult. It seems that struggling (a little or a lot) is part of the reward in this important effort. When I started doing Danish research I was not young and thought I couldn't do it, but with just a few words I was on my way. You'll have a great time and feel pleased with a new skill... go for it!!
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Things will get easier with time. For your Norwegian research you have a great help from the Norwegian National Archives at https://www.digitalarkivet.no. They have an ongoing project to transcribe, not just index, the Norwegian parish records. The transcription headings can be viewed in English. These transcriptions are linked to the parish register they come from and occasionally there will be link to the actual page.
For example, here is a random birth record with the website set to Norwegian (click on the image to enlarge it):
Switch to English to see this:
Get a good list of Norwegian words valuable in genealogy such as this one in the Family Search wiki:https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Norwegian_Genealogical_Word_List
to learn what Barn, Far, and Mor or other words mean, if you can't tell from the context.
Scroll down the page to see the link in the bottom left part of the page to jump to the section of the parish register covering births:
Page forward to the year 1834, look for entry 58 for that year, and compare the transcription with the actual record to learn how to read it:
It's a great way to get familiar with the structure of the records and the handwriting. The transcriptions are usually done by genealogical groups in Norway or the archives themselves so are usually very high quality.
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