Transkribus, Scantent and DocScan = Transcription of manuscripts made easy!!!

Transcriptions with Transkribus

Transcription is a ‘monk’s job’. It is fundamental in our work to be able to work with handwritten texts, but transcription is time consuming, and thus we as researchers have to question the costs versus return. What if the computer could assist and take over this time consuming task?

Transkribus is an automated recognition, transcription platform that enables OCRed search in manuscripts. Starting from a sample of trained texts, a model is trained apply HTR (Handwriting Text Recognition) to the rest of your documents. This results in a Character Error Rate– by one hand – between 5 and 10%, meaning that the manuscript is correctly transcribed from 90 to 95%.

It enables character recognition where you can identify specific keywords, using Transkribus’ keyword spotter, allowing you to go over your texts much quicker, map patterns and changes in texts across time.