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Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: brianz on Friday 17 February 12 11:12 GMT (UK)
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As I was transcribing some old wills I found this site for the recognition of old handwiting thought it might be useful
Can it please be moved to the Resources section
Thanks
http://web.archive.org/web/20120509022051/http://www.genealogia.fi/faq/faq031e.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20120509022051/http://www.genealogia.fi/faq/faq031e.htm)
archive link
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NICE! Just what I'd been searching for. Thanks for posting this, brianz :D
There's another one here, but not as good.
http://www.rootschat.com/links/0k9s/
Cheers,
China
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Thanks Brianz.
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You're welcome
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Really useful, thanks Brianz.
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Thanks both. Two good links. I particularly like that both provide examples
of different variants. Hopefully an admin will update the resources post on
this board, but have added them to my favourites in case not.
vv.
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May I add this one? that I just found while looking at a question in this forum:
Early Modern Handwriting: Alphabets
http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/alphabets.html (http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/alphabets.html)
"The links to individual letter-forms contain illustrations drawn from the manuscripts collected on this site, and present roughly chronological accounts of the letters as they appear in English documents between 1500 and 1700."
Click on each upper-case or lower-case letter, in the boxes on the left and right, to see several examples of each, excerpted from actual documents. I found it very useful.
edit -- oops, I see that site is in berlin-bob's thread -- but the link above goes directly to the page for accessing samples, so I'll leave this post, as the site and that page deserve special mention for their usefulness, I think. ;)
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And this one too: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/
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For Ancestry subscribers they recently added a text call Court Hand restored - very good help
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This will come in very handy I think. Thank you for posting.
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We use #Examples of Handwriting 1550-1650 by W.S.B Buck - can get it SoG and National Archives shop or that place which most people buy books.
Jill :D
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For Scottish documents, the following are useful:
http://www.scottishhandwriting.com (http://www.scottishhandwriting.com)
especially http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/tutorials.asp (http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/tutorials.asp)
Together with the online dictionary of the Scots Language:
http://www.dsl.ac.uk (http://www.dsl.ac.uk)
vv.
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For those obsolete or obscure words in wills etc.
Wright's 'English Dialect Dictionary' in six volumes
available as searchable pdf files.
Claims to contain all words known to have been used
or still in use over the 200 years up to 1898.
Volume 1: http://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi01wrig
and so on for the other 5 volumes.
vv.
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That seems a great link, Thanks.
Thanks also to Janey for her excellent link. I hadn't visited this site before but it is really good.
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The Record Interpreter, sets out to expand upon Wright's
Courthand Restored, and succeeds, particularly with
abbreviations. Pdf file available here:
http://archive.org/details/recordinterprete00martiala
This resource has been brought to our attention at this
board numerous times (by arthurk, Roger in Sussex,
billyblue, msallen, and redroger) but for the sake of
people newly arriving here, I think its worth posting
to a resources topic.
vv.
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A group of us have been transcribing wills for our history society for four years. The books which help us are: 'Examples of Handwriting' - W.S.B.Buck [ I mentioned this earlier] 'The Local Historian's Glossary and Vade Mecum' - Joy Bristow and 'Words from Wills & other probate records' - Stuart A Raymond, 'A Secretary Hand ABC Book' by Alf Ison, a great little book. All are excellent. We have covered from 1540 to around 1750 so far.
Hoping this helps anyone starting out on this project, which I would recommend to all history societies be they family or local.
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Brianz's link has disappeared, anybody know where to? Unfortunately the site is a Finnish genealogical society and even with Google Translate to help I can't find a handwriting section :P
Cheers,
China
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Just tried it, and got a 404 Not found error
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Found an archive copy that seems to work, if anyone finds a new live website let me know.
Sarah :)
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The Wayback Machine! Brilliant, sarah...hadn't thought of it :P Thanks!
Strange but it doesn't seem to work more than once from the link. If you are having the same problem, bookmark the link first time there and use the bookmark to access the page subsequently.
Cheers,
China
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Thanks for the tip
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cool!
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I don't think anyone has linked to this
Johnson and Jenkinson, English Court Hand, A.D. 1066 to 1500.
https://archive.org/details/englishcourthand01john/page/n6
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I don't know if anyone has linked to this, but I found the following link extremely useful when I couldn't figure out certain words on some 17th century wills - the best example for me being "a moiety", which I was consistently transcribing as "moistly" and completely changing the context of the sentence in the process :-)
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~fordingtondorset/genealogy/Files/Glossary.html
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Some years ago I was able to help a lady on this site who was having difficulty with a 16th century Lincolnshire sheep farmer
"s inventory. The word causing difficulty was hoggett. This was causing confusion, a hoggett is a lamb from the previous season and not a piglet.
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this is just a test post
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Just found this page:
https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/2/21/Alphabet_Abbreviations.pdf
Useful advice and good examples.
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There is a free online transcribing tool now available, which a limited number of people may may useful:
'Transkribus' is an AI-powered platform for text recognition, transcription
and searching of historical documents – from any place, any time, and in any language.
https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/
It works with both printed and handwritten text (probably works best with printed text).
On their website you first select a pre-programmed model, which has been designed for a specific document type, (e.g. typewritten latin, Dutch Gothic Print 16th-18th century etc etc.) there are 120 public models available.
https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/public-models/
You find the closest fit to your document type/ text, then click 'view and try model' - upload your
document into the window - Jpeg or PNG only - it then transcribes the document into the language of the model.
I have been trying out this TransKribus software on 16th Century, untidily hand written scots/latin documents for a few weeks now and apart from the odd intelligible sentence here and there, have had no success whatsoever!
Good Luck!
PS Don't ask me any questions about this AI powered software - because I don't know anything.
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A useful guide to reading old handwriting has recently been issued by IHGS, with practice examples and solutions.
Downloadable (free) here ...
https://www.ihgs.ac.uk/_resources/introduction-to-paleography.pdf
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A useful guide to reading old handwriting has recently been issued by IHGS, with practice examples and solutions.
Downloadable (free) here ...
https://www.ihgs.ac.uk/_resources/introduction-to-paleography.pdf
link didn't work for me...
This one did: https://www.ihgs.ac.uk/files/1529-1-1.pdf
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Thanks for the info on sites to read old hand writing. I have two wills one from middle 1800's & one from middle 1600's to decipher. This will definitely help.
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Has any-one successfully used Transkribus to translate 16th/17th century script? I have tried the basic models with very limited success and the more complex model would cost me around £80.
I am considering designing my own model but that would take time (if I manage!!) I would like to get some idea of whether it is worth it.
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First of all: Transkribus does NOT translate old script. It tries to transcribe it.
Designing your own model is only useful if you have lots of pages from the same hand. You'll have to 'feed' your model first with at least 10 to 20 pages that you have transcribed yourself (as perfect as possible!). This is the starting point of your model. Next step will be letting the model try for itself. You will have to correct this afterwards to show the model where it made mistakes. Gradually it will learn from its experience and make fewer mistakes. This takes time, but can save time in the end if there are lots of pages to process.
What kind of documents are you talking about? What kind of language? What kind of handwriting? There are a lot of basic models available, so perhaps you didn't find the most suitable yet.
Even if there's no model that does the job fairly well, it can provide a starting point for you to crack the code.
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Your first comment agrees with where I am at the moment hence the post.
I have worked through a few wills manually and have found it a strain on the eyes, a transcriber would be a great help.
I have searched through the free models and have not found one that accurately transcribes my 16th/17th English script.
If it is true that it is only capable of transcribing documents by the same person then it is of no use. If it is capable of transcribing any script written in "secretarial hand" then it would be useful. I want to be able to transcribe script from different people over about 100 years. If I have to teach a model to do part of that and then reteach it to do the rest I could live with that.
They are touting a super model as being the one to use but that costs money, I don't mind spending it if I know it will work.
I have looked at presentations on how to train the model and, frankly, they aren't written simply enough for my intellect but I would have a go.
There looks to be a couple of ways of doing it and I don't know which would be the best. It seems that you can feed it a script, use the most appropriate model, correct the answer and save it as approved. Alternatively you can feed it all your test pieces and the ranslated pages and set it off.
It could take me some time but I like mental challenges.
I have training data but I am not sure it meets the criterion for being identical.
So, the questions remains:
Is Transkribus worth persuing?
Can you actually train a model with the amount of credits you get for free?
Is the Super Model worth paying for or is it better, or even feasible, for me to do my own?
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I would suggest that the only way is to learn first yourself. The amount of variation in handwritten scripts is enormous and it is far easier to work on these documents by yourself. There are plenty of sources of help, including the wonderful folks here, and loads of books with examples. It’s the route I took and I make sure that I keep copies of all the scripts carefully annotated to help me deciphering new documents that crop up. The most difficult bits are when the source is in Latin or you cannot get a decent image, but there’s always help here.
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If it is true that it is only capable of transcribing documents by the same person then it is of no use. If it is capable of transcribing any script written in "secretarial hand" then it would be useful.
If your aim is to have a model that succesfully handles a wide variety of secretarial hand, then I doubt you'll be able to train your own model. So-called super models combine the skills of different models, and are best suited for this task. However, the strenght of a super model depends on the amount of data it combines. I don't have experience with English, but from my own experience I know that super models for German and Dutch can handle a wide variety of different scripts. Maybe the English super model isn't as skilled as these yet.
I have searched through the free models and have not found one that accurately transcribes my 16th/17th English script.
I've gone through the list of available models for English only, and these are, in my opinion, the ones worth trying. Can you confirm you've tested them all?
Egerton: https://app.transkribus.org/models/public/text/369325
English Elder: https://app.transkribus.org/models/public/text/english-elder-super-model
The English Eagle: https://app.transkribus.org/models/public/text/53042
TCD 17th Century English: https://app.transkribus.org/models/public/text/tcd-17th-century-english
There are also a few super models that can handle multiple languages. They are also worth a try.
So, the questions remains:
Is Transkribus worth persuing?
Can you actually train a model with the amount of credits you get for free?
Is the Super Model worth paying for or is it better, or even feasible, for me to do my own?
I've never paid for Transkribus, so I honestly can't tell if it's worth the money. Likewise I don't know if the free credits are sufficient to train a model.
One thing I know is that you can't take a super model as base and train it further to suit your needs. You'll have to find a 'normal' model as starting point and 'feed' it with your data. If this data are scripts that widely vary, then I fear the results could be very disappointing.
My suggestion: I would test all the above models with a few of your scripts. The outcome will tell you which model(s) you could use as a starting point, if any.
Knowing this will hopefully make it easier to decide what to do next.
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OK.
Thanks for your replies.
Bob