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If screen size of a MacBook is an issue for genealogy buy the MacBook and a cheap external screen for use as a secondary screen when the MacBook is at home. The best of both worlds!

Google Chrome is a web browser which allegedly is very good at spying on what you're doing, and sending the results back to Google 

Various internet tools, probably including Chrome, look at info like your location and what you visit. I gather the claimed benefit is that they can target adverts etc better. My recollection is that most of these, including Chrome, have a way to turn off this collection -- perhaps someone can enlighten us.

However, there is no need to use Chrome to get Translate.  At the risk of robbing myself of some business  , Google translate is available independent of browser. Just go to a Google search page and select Translate under the more option at the top of the page --  then follow the bouncing ball...

There is one information gathering issue however. If you have something confidential to translate then many translators say it is better not to use Google translate as, in my understanding, it uses a database of stuff it has encountered before: and in goes your confidential stuff.

--Geoff

Definitely on line automatic translation is worth a try. However, as you may find, all too often what is returned makes only minimal sense: depends on how may phrases Google translate has encountered (and stored with their translations) before.

As a co-proprietor of a Dutch <--> English translation business which does translate genealogical documents I find that, especially with older, handwritten documents the key step is transcription. Translation is then relatively straightforward, though Google and its ilk can struggle because of the differences between Dutch and English word order, idiom etc -- not to mention archaic words, spelling and grammar.

On the side of Google and automatic translation: it is free. Translation and transcription are labour intensive and far from free in many cases.

Cheers
Geoff

Sorry shapm4, I was so focussed on the Krok side that I neglected to notice you were talking about the Blochs.

However, in fact for health reasons I have been off this stuff for six months or more and hope to get back to it soon.

As I recall it, one of the Bloch problems is that it is/was a fairly common name in various variants in Eastern Europe.

Hopefully when I am once more immersed in this research and have my own data more fully at my mental fingertips I will come back to your contribution and respond more cogently.

Cheers
Geoff

This more an update than a "reply" to my own post.

I have a P. Cohen arriving in Sydney on Nov 23 1911. The list [part of a crew and passenger list] implies, but does not say, that all those on the list boarded in London [and not en route]. This person is a good candidate for "my" Philip.

However, a search on findmypast for a P. Cohen (or ANY Cohen, for that matter) leaving on the Otranto for Australia in 1911 yielded no one.

One possibility is that the index is incomplete. However, the only way to check this is to find the relevant departure of the Otranto and look page by page through the passenger list.

There are NO other P. Cohens, male or female, in the shipping departure lists on line for any ship that fit the bill as "my" one. All depart either too early to have fathered Jessie's second child or significantly long after Jessie.

In summary, the Otranto person is very likely him, but I would very much like to establish him leaving Britain as well as arriving in Sydney.

-G