Category: Assignment #1

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Assignment #1

Latrobe Transcription

Transcribing the Latrobe Memoirs was a new experience for me. Being so up close with each and every word that was being transcribed made it easier to search for the overall meaning. As a modern reader, I am used to reading books and articles with big ideas, and almost skimming each line. However this process was new for me as each page, sentence, word, and letter carried an importance. These sentences provided an insight into an unexplored life.

This process of transcribing started out bumpy as the memoir documents were blurry and quite hard to read. Zooming in made the letters in the entire word blend together making it illegible. Professor Faull was able to quickly contact an archivist in London to receive clearer pictures. Thankfully we received a quick response. This made the process easier as zooming in on a cursive word made it easier to transcribe because of the improved clarity. I also believe that my inference skills were improved as some words were not transcribable therefore based on the context of the sentence my teammates and I were able to guess the word. Another challenge was transcribing abbreviations. Because we no longer write with these abbreviations, going back to the lists of abbreviations from this time period was the only way I could transcribe accurately.

Accuracy was key as we were supposed to be typing someone else’s words, not making up our own. Therefore getting these pages as close to perfect with a few sets of eyes starting with my own, then my teammates, and if need be Professor Faull. Looking so close at these memoirs has given me a new perspective on someone else’s life. I enjoyed this process very much as it was different from everything I’ve done in the past and I learned many new skills and ideas.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JskmdGh4grdhqHksXQmYSCRA0D3VlchO1ceAMjTDobo/edit

 

 

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Assignment #1

Assignment #1

The process of the digital text creation was based upon sound of the word for the most part. Being that English is not my first language and not being able to learning it properly, especially cursive old English. I had to ask for help from my teammates around me or my professors that were there to help. The process of this assignment was to understand how to transcribe the feelings and the meaning of the people of the past to this modern age, so people can have access to this transcribe.

With the connection of the documents I had was pretty slim to none because I have never heard of the Moravian lives till I enrolled into this class. However, I was surprised by the fact that these letters had much more meaning to it than I imagine. When doing the section that I was assigned to do there wasn’t many people, dates and etc. ,but there were a lot of traits or characteristics that describe the situation of the event or a person. It captivated me in seeing how these people from the past were able put emotions into the paper with different metaphors in a weird way that captivated me. While doing this assignment it taught me how to be more openly aware that I am not going get it on the first try when transcribing a document because sometimes a document can be blurry or really hard to read.

To get a precise digital text I had to re-read the pages that I was assigned. The reason for it is to see if there were any errors in spelling and to see if the a line makes sense to the whole story. Also, just talking to ones own group members to see their perspective in this matter is a huge advantage to see if this correct.

Link to google docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JskmdGh4grdhqHksXQmYSCRA0D3VlchO1ceAMjTDobo/edit?ts=5b8ec2ae

Link to Moravian lives: http://moravian.bucknell.edu/scripto/?scripto_action=transcribe&scripto_doc_id=300031&scripto_doc_page_id=4000490

Pg numbers 35-40

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Assignment #1

Assignment #1

I had the opportunity to transcribe quite a few documents within the Moravian Lives project, which I had never done before. At first, I was reluctant to begin reading old cursive handwriting, but once I began the assignment my opinion quickly changed. Through this assignment I was able to read and transcribe the works of Henry Unger, Rosine Tanneberger, and Anna Elizabeth Rauch.

Some of these readings were very difficult to understand, due to the many grammatical mistakes and illegible handwriting, but I enjoyed working through it. Every time that I was able to transcribe a word that gave me difficulty, I couldn’t help but feel satisfied. Once I had all of my documents typed, I then read them over and found myself very interested in what the original authors had written. It really helped my understanding of what the author was trying to convey by reading the documents when they were typed out and “uncoded” in some instances. It was very helpful working in a group for this project because when one of us was troubled by a word or phrase we could work through it together. It made the process easier and more enjoyable.

In the Henry Unger document, I was able to read a brief account of the life and faith of Ober Peyle from 1721 to 1750. It was a little confusing to understand, but I believe that Henry Unger was speaking about him as a sinner who was forgiven and joined his congregation. In the second document I transcribed, I learned about the life Rosine Tanneberger and her journey to find rest for her “soul.” Lastly, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Brendan on the Anna Elizabeth Rauch document. We both found this document to be very hard to understand, but concluded that it was an account of her journey from Jamaica to Mesopotamia.

 

Henry Unger pg. 1

Rosine Tannerberger

Anna Elizabeth Rauch pg.6

Anna Elizabeth Rauch pg. 7

Anna Elizabeth Rauch pg. 8

Anna Elizabeth Rauch pg. 9

 

Google Doc 

 

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Assignment #1

Ester Latrobe Transcription

http://moravian.bucknell.edu/memoirs/Esther-Latrobe/

Google Doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JskmdGh4grdhqHksXQmYSCRA0D3VlchO1ceAMjTDobo/edit

 

My group’s assignment was to review a 40-page digital archive of text written by Esther Latrobe and then decipher the text back into modern day English. This literature was handwritten in script using an old English dialect from the 1800’s. Personally, I found transcribing this document challenging because script is not a common form of writing that I am used to reading. Ironically, the elementary school teachers who insisted that the real world used script were mistaken. After a couple weeks of writing in script, I reverted back to writing standardly and rarely saw the use of script ever again. The first curveball thrown at our group while transcribing these documents was when we encountered double letters. In script, a double letter results in one large letter next to a smaller version of that letter. This concept was difficult to pick up on first but once you recognize what these double letters looked like the words became rather simple to read, which seemed to be the general theme of this process. We started to recognize the style of the handwriting, making the deciphering process even easier. However, a major dilemma was the quality of the pictures that were provided. Since we had a larger document compared to other groups, a significant portion of our archive provided blurry pictures. However, after contacting a London archivist, we were quicked given a pdf of a clear version.

I found it interesting to learn about the differences in the linguistic style of Latrobe and colloquial English. For example, since Latrobe was quite religious the text had a lot of content about the “Saviour” instead of using the word “Savior”. Another recurring word was “thou” and “thy”. When our group finished transcribing the document, we had to reach a consensus on how we wanted to tag the transcribed words. We were slightly unclear on whether we wanted to tag all prepositions such as “she” or “her” as people or all any type of word that suggested people such as “daughter” or “family” in the people category. However, in the end, we decided on just tagging all proper nouns in the people category.