Poor transcriptions

[LeedsHipPriest69]

Just been looking on both Ancestry and Find My Past in the hope of finding some evidence of my 4 x Great Grandparents parentage.

I knew that Lancelot Key had died before the first census, but his widow survived him and died a few years later in 1843. Through a copy death certificate I know that Sarah lived in Broad Street Stoke on Trent in 1843, I subsequently found her on the 1841 Census on FindMyPast albeit with the mistranscription of Sarah Kay, easily done.

Anyhow as my main tree data is saved on Ancestry I looked up said person on the 1841 Census, and nothing, a complete blank, so I decided to scroll through the images and as look would have it, no idea how I missed it before, their daughter Elizabeth along with her husband Thomas Tew and family lived in the same area and were even on the same page of the census. The reason I couldn't find Sarah when searching, was that the transcription had her down as Sarah Kong.

You would think with the money both sites extort from us, they would look to review transcriptions, technology having moved on so so much since I first registered with Ancestry.

Gripe over, but I wonder, are there better alternatives out there to Ancestry ? Is My Heritage worth a look ?

[Andrew Tarr]

You have to remember that a good proportion of the transcription was done in India (and maybe other countries) by people unfamiliar with Victorian script.  I have done a small amount myself and recognise the difficulty.  Tho I think a certain amount of checking is done, the cost and delay in checking are significant deterrents.  All end-users like us can do is report errors as we find them, and hope they are acted upon.

[Jon_ni]

Generally a search of Findmypast will be successful if Ancestry has mistranscribed or there is a missed page and vice versa as most were done independently.
The 1841 can be problematical as was filled in in pencil and has little contrast on the microfilm, whereas all subsequent were in ink.
Certain collections can be better transcribed on one site or the other eg the 1939 on Findmypast tends to have streets carried from the previous page when the top row is redacted whereas Ancestry seems to have instructed their transcribers to just leave blank and not spend the extra time.
The 1841-1901 Scottish census seems better on FindMyPast for the areas I have searched, but one individual/team could be more proficient/dedicated than another. The 1921 is rubbish on both as Ancestry purchased Findmypasts transcripts and they collaborated and jointly did the Irish R.C. baptisms.
Bear in mind you can always search Findmypast even without a subscription and the results summary with parish and district for census may be sufficient to then locate the mistranscription on Ancestry eg by eliminating surname but including birth year and birth county. They generally show more than Ancestry does without a sub in their search index results so is where I turn to.
In your Sarah Kay/Key example you have knowledge from subsequent or prior records to assist and can spent time zooming in and comparing how an individual enumerator formed his letters, rather than reading in isolation with targets to meet and hence time pressure to get the page and ledger completed efficiently.

A.I. is now being used by Ancestry and Familysearch for bulk transcripts of handwriting eg 1950 US and Familysearch have implemented on some previously untranscribed films https://www.johngrenham.com/browse/retrieve_text.php?text_contentid=524 certainly faster than the graph on https://irishdeedsindex.net/

[HughC]

It annoys me that when I submit a correction to the 1921 census to Ancestry, it is shown only as an "alternate": a search using the correct spelling is still just as unlikely to find the person.  So why do I bother making corrections?

In my experience you can forget My Heritage.

[wilcoxon]

It annoys me that when I submit a correction to the 1921 census to Ancestry, it is shown only as an "alternate": a search using the correct spelling is still just as unlikely to find the person.  So why do I bother making corrections?

In my experience you can forget My Heritage.

That is so true, I have been looking at a lady with an unusual middle name and in all cases she is only showing as "alternative".  As her other names are Mary and Jones there's little chance of others without knowledge of the siblings finding her.

[susieroe]

When we were transcribing the 1851 Census we were told to enter what we could see, not what we thought it should be; ie., between 'tailor' and 'sailor', if the t definitely looked more like an s then you'd plump for sailor, even though it was in deepest Leicestershire and you would assume it was tailor. 3 people transcribed the pages, which a fourth person then scrutinised and approved the best copy.

[HughC]

An important reason for transcribing is to create an index so that one can find people.
Therefore it makes sense to transcribe what was obviously meant, not (for example) what an enumerator mistakenly assumed was written.

And transcribers should have been chosen who had at least some idea of names of people and places.
Given that that was not done, corrections submitted by relatives should be accepted.
Ancestry's handling of the 1921 census is a disgrace.

[MollyC]

Are Ancestry's suggestions indexed?  I doubt it.

Findmypast generally deals with corrections to the 1921 census, and other record sets, though if they reject a correction it would be helpful also to have space for suggestions.  It would be also be useful because I found they cannot deal with corrections to record sets transcribed elsewhere and purchased by FindMyPast, eg Canada censuses, so there is no button under More Actions.  FindMyPast said they would pass my corrections on, but they have not been acted on.

What makes no sense in Ancestry is finding members of one household with different surname spellings, because a transcriber wrote what they could see and it was not scrutinised.  FindMyPast's competance in indexing is generally more satisfactory.

[Andrew Tarr]

An important reason for transcribing is to create an index so that one can find people.  Therefore it makes sense to transcribe what was obviously meant, not (for example) what an enumerator mistakenly assumed was written.

Having done a fair bit of transcribing, I sympathise with your sentiments, but the difficulty is in deciding how 'obvious' the meaning appears to be.  In the above example of choosing between Tailor and Sailor, or Lawyer and Sawyer, one has to 'transcribe what one sees'.  That can be a moot point, especially when the transcriber is unfamiliar with the enumerator's way of writing.

However I can see no excuse for entering a ridiculous version of a well-known place name, for example, just because the original writing seemed unrecognisable.  It should be worth a minute's deliberation.  It is also impossible to argue about the spelling of surnames, which have no truly accepted spelling.  One example : I have transcribed church records for a rural Lancashire parish, where the same vicar alternated the spelling of Howarth and Haworth, apparently at random, for about 50 years.  I very much doubt that the various families insisted on one version or the other.