Transcriptions

[yappie]

Came across another gem in the 1901+1. Female 70+ Old Agent Plummer Should read OLD AGED PENSIONER The original is quite clear.
yappie

[MaryA]

I wonder sometimes what planet these transcribers are on.

[dickiesam]

I believe one of the reasons for odd/strange transcriptions is the use of OCR [Optical character recognition] software. Used properly it is so much faster than manual character recognition and can be quite accurate. Instead of a person reading each word of each line on a document and typing the transcription word by word, running an OCR pen device along the sentence with the output going directly into a database. The problem arises when there is no proof-reading of the finished document.

[MaryA]

Surely that couldn't be managed with handwriting? especially some of that we've seen on Parish Registers and Censuses. I suppose technology must have come a long way.

[dickiesam]

I suppose technology must have come a long way.

Computer programmed OCR has indeed come a very long way since its start in the 1970s.

An advanced form of OCR is ICR, Intelligent Character Recognition, targeting handwritten printscript or cursive text [joined-up writing] one character at a time. A version of ICR is Intelligent Word Recognition (IWR) which targets handwritten printscript or cursive text, one word at a time.

[MaryA]

You learn something new every day! I wish the sites using it would learn to have it checked before accepting.

[dickiesam]

Similar OCR problems were probably at the root of Katie's long list of military Johns 'transcribed' as Jonathans! I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who famously said... "Don't believe everything you read on the web!"

[MaryA]

That is another stupidity, I suspect that was a spreadsheet thing, once the name was typed in one box it was auto offered whenever Jo ... began to be typed and stupidly it was accepted.

We've heard so often about "computer errors" but it's the operative who both uses and who should check.