About Us
What Will You Find Here?
Meet Katherine
With more than a decade of experience professionally translating German to English, I love helping clients like you discover the fascinating lives of their German ancestors. Deciphering the old handwriting and finding the perfect words to unlock the secrets of your family letters, diaries, and records – as well as teaching you how to do it yourself – is something I truly enjoy.
Born in St. Louis, I earned my Master’s degree in the German language through Bowling Green State University/University of Salzburg. I then spent three additional years in Austria, teaching English and translating German (with a focus on history). In 2014, I moved back to the States with my Austrian husband, and, although we are now in America, German is still the main language spoken in our home. As a German-English genealogy translator and educator, I can happily say I love what I do.
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What Clients Are Saying:
I had that hardest of genealogical roadblocks- someone who changed their name illegally and died with their secret. Katherine provided very careful and scholarly transcriptions and translations of some key documents. Mystery solved. My advice: engage a professional like Katherine and don’t guess at the content of Kurrent manuscripts when the result matters to you.
After my parents passed away, I discovered a letter written to my grandfather in 1930 from a nephew who lived in Germany. (My grandfather had immigrated in the 1890s). Because the letter was handwritten and in German, it was impossible for me to make out many of the letters/words; therefore, I looked for a way to get it translated. When I searched for someone reputable, I came across the website for SK Translations and after debating for a long time about the expenditure, as well as, dealing …
Thank you for a great job! I am very impressed that you could read, never mind translate, her writing. Very professional and much appreciated! I will have it bound and send copies to my cousins. I should mention too that the footnotes you provided were very helpful and beyond what I expected.
It was a pleasure working with you Katherine. I appreciated your rapid response to my requests. The German and English versions of all the documents were perfectly formatted down to the tiny letters on the bottom of the pre-printed baptismal certificate which identified the printer. Thank you.
Great job. You have unlocked a mystery. The relationship between Ignatz and Mathaus was unclear until now. Thanks.
I hired Katherine to translate German Script from the 18th & 19th centuries. I wanted to include the translations in a family history document. She responded quickly to my emails and was more than willing to answer the many questions I had both prior to and after the translation. Katherine provided both English and German translations of this very difficult to read script. She included footnotes and historical website links that added greatly to my understanding of some of the terms used in the …
Katherine transcribed several handwritten German documents dating from the Second World War for me, and it was truly a pleasure to work with her. Thanks to her skill in deciphering the texts, I’ve learned a great deal about my family history, and she was particularly thorough in researching the places and names included in the text. Katherine is professional and resourceful with a great eye for detail – exactly as a good translator should be – and I would not hesitate in recommending her.
Her knowledge of the German language, written and oral, is very remarkable and impressive.
I can highly recommend the work of Katherine. I used her services to proofread my master thesis and the result greatly benefited from her thorough and detailed checking. Her feedback and comments were very constructive and extremely helpful. Moreover, the work was done timely and she responds to questions quickly. I will definitely use her services again.
Katherine was instrumental in helping me give my wife—her words—“the best gift she has ever gotten.” For forty years, she has had copies of letters to and from her beloved grandmother and her siblings handwritten in German. Katherine translated the letters beautifully, providing us with both the German and English digital files. She was always responsive in our communications and met challenging time deadlines so that I could give my wife the letters as a Christmas present. Her fees were…