Dead end due to only speaking/reading in English

[PeggySueOooOo]

On one side of my family all of my great grandparents moved to England around 1900 as part of a mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe.

I have found immigration documents which show my family originated in Poland, Ukraine and Russia.

I don't speak/read any of these languages. It feels like this means my genealogy research has come to a natural dead end which is a shame as on the other side of my family I can go back more than 100 years further.

Is there a trick I am missing or (short of learning a foreign language) is my search over?

Would copy/ pasting into Google translate help?
Or maybe finding someone on a genealogy board who might be able to translate them for you? Ancestry has boards.

Have you tried Jewishgen.org? There’s a message board and lots of other resources. I found a Spanish and Portuguese group who help trace Sephardic ancestors, there must be equivalent projects for other regions? Good luck.

some if not most archive websites are run in english as well as in the native language. the birth/death/marriage records are sometimes in Latin in my country and it might be similar in the countries you are interested in. even if you have to learn some words there won't be that many as its fairly repetitive in those records. you might need to learn the different scripts though.
I am sure there will be genealogical forum/fcb groups and such places that will help you find the way. I am sure you are not the only one with this family history.

I was going to suggest JewishGen. They have a notice board where people request translations.

www.deepl.com/en/translator

^

This is a good app to use

You don’t have to speak a language fluently to learn to read birth and marriage certificates and census entries. The vocabulary involved is pretty limited. You can definitely fo this OP.

Yes - JewishGen is fabulous.

Depending where your relatives arrived, there may be experts in local archives to help. I have had help from the Scottish Jewish Archves in Glasgow - the volunteers are amazing, so knowledgeable and helpful, many also read Hebrew. There's a similar archive at the Jewish Museum of London.

Or post on one of the Jewish genealogy groups on Facebook.

Ooo, thank you for all your ideas. I will definitely try JewishGen. I hadn't heard of that before. I was feeling a bit defeated but with some translation apps maybe I can do this. Thank you again.

Hope you get lots of help there, keep us posted. It’s hard to follow these paper trails because people on the run from persecution often changed their names with each new country they moved to, then married under different names again in the next country before dying under new names again in a completely different region. Mine mostly became Christian at least outwardly. DNA testing can further your research by connecting you with living relatives who might have photos or family stories of your shared ancestors or even who still speak Ladino or whatever language - most are dying out now.