Category: Blog #4

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Blog #4

Blog #4

The past couple of weeks, my group and I have been doing a lot to try and transcribe the memoir of Elizabeth Grundy.  I am in a group of four and we each were assigned to 6 pages each.  It was very challenging being able to read the tough cursive. Having to read it so many times, I realized how tough Elizabeth Grundy’s life was.  She went through very much struggle and had to react in different circumstances. She also looked to God very much, asking for his help. Each group member was assigned a certain amount of pages of the memoir, so that aspect was individual, but we eventually needed to come together to create the timelines and when we started tagging everything.  We had to discuss and decide which words were tagged to which specific thing. One debate we had was whether Jesus, Savior, and Christ were going to be marked as “Persname” or “Rolename”. This was important because people have different beliefs, and we all needed to agree on the tag. We decided on “Rolename” so then we had to make sure everyone tagged those.  Another thing that we had trouble with was deciding what was considered “objects” and what we’re not. I originally did not know if every noun or thing was an object. We decided on only specific words being objects.  It took a while to tag each emotion and to decide the words.  Here is an example of the decision to tag God as roleName instead of persName.  It was an important decision to choose this and it worked out well for our group.

In the reading “A Rationale of Digital Documentary Editions” by Elena Pierazzo, the author states how she believes that a transcription is a form of translation.  Each transcription is translated differently so each author creates different transcriptions. There are many different features included in the process that help the transcription.  The author chooses their specific interpretation and they chose what to represent each and it changes based on the author’s vision. There are purposes of editors, which are similar to what we do with tagging.  We also edit by making sure the words match the same as the original document.

Here is an example of the different tags for each emotion.  It took a lot to find each and to physically tag each word.

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Blog #4

Blog Post #4

As a group working on the Bethlehem memoirs, it was difficult to decide how to transcribe and tag our memoirs considering they were all authored by different people. In order to remain consistent, we decided to use the original format for the texts as best we could and include the ampersands and original spellings for words such as “Saviour.” In addition, we kept where the author capitalized random words. This was a decision made by all group members and it was one that was very difficult. We struggled to find the line where our decisions were altering the texts significantly. As Pierazzo emphasizes Driscoll’s point in the article, Driscoll says, “we might conclude that one possible and tempting answer to the question ‘where to stop’ could be ‘nowhere’, as there are potentially infinite sets of facts to be recorded. Nevertheless such an answer opens the field to more theoretical and practical concerns” (pg. 466). The marking up of these transcriptions has enabled me to understand that though portions of the original document are present, they are still being altered. Our transcriptions of the Bethlehem memoirs have been changed to be better understood by the reader and in some ways that could affect the originality of the texts.

With the members of my group, we decided to tag “Jesus,” “Saviour,” and “Holy Ghost,” as people to remain consistent in our TEI model. Also, we thought that it was a good idea to change our abbreviated terms like “Br.” to the full word of “Brethren.” This process was most interesting to me in this project because it felt like I, personally, was bringing my transcription to life. Pierazzo explains this process of tagging in the best way possible by stating, “The output displays the transcribed text as closely as possible to the original document, but it is the scripts that store the knowledge (the scholarship) of how to produce such an edition. One might use a culinary metaphor here: the source contains the ingredients, the scripts contain the recipe, and the output represents the cooked dish” (pg. 473). I was identifying the key terms and encoding them at the same time. In the article written by Pierazzo, she explains how, “One of the reasons why the TEI model is particularly effective is because it enables the encoding and transcription of several alternatives for the same segment allowing, for example, the encoding of abbreviated forms along with the expanded ones, or of erroneous passages and their editorial corrections” (pg. 473). Overall, we hadn’t encountered any disputes about our markup decisions because we had collectively agreed to use similar tags and worked closely on our own individual transcriptions. Each document was different, except for the way we decided to format it.

 

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Blog #4

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My group has been working on transcribing writing from the 18th century Moravian culture. The process of marking up our transcriptions has been fascinating. As explained by Tanselle, there are inevitably many differences between our transcriptions and the original text. “Some characteristics of the manuscript are irredeemably lost by transcribing it, for instance the variable shape and spacing of handwritten glyphs versus the constant shape of digital fonts or typescripts,” (464). It is valid that no matter what, there will be discrepancies between the texts. Additionally, there are differences between the pages I transcribed and those of my group members. My group of four people transcribed the Samuel Tippett memoir, each transcribing about 4 pages. While my group and I transcribed the same memoir, there are differences in the way we understood and transcribed our pages. Tanaselle explains that, “Obviously a transcription cannot exactly reproduce the relative precision or carelessness with which handwritten letters are formed, or their relative sizes, or the amount of space between words and lines…The process of selection is inevitably an interpretative act: what we choose to represent and what we do not depends either on the particular vision that we have of a particular manuscript or on practical constraints,” (465). Through the process of marking up our transcriptions, we were able to unify our texts logically. 

Through the process of marking up our texts, we have practiced the concept of close reading. Close reading allowed us to understand the text more deeply than we may have otherwise. We picked up on elements of it that we may not have otherwise and were able to then analyze it. However, choosing which parts of the text to tag was difficult. As Michael Hunter explains, “An electronic edition is like an iceberg, with far more data potentially available than is actually visible on the screen, and this is at the same time a great opportunity and a temptation to overdo things. When so many possibilities exist, there is a danger of technological considerations of what can be done taking priority over intellectual considerations of what is actually desirable or necessary in any particular case,” (167). Our group chose which phrases to tag carefully in order to make sure our pages were cohesive and consistent. Tagging emotions was challenging for my group, because Tippett used lots of emotional words such as love and heart throughout the text. We came to the conclusion that it was best for us to tag words that pertained to Tippett himself, in order to curtail the extent of our tagging.

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Blog #4

Blog #4

Over the past few weeks, our group has been focused on transcribing the Grundy memoir and we just finished tagging it up. These two steps are what Pierazzo refers to as the creation of the diplomatic edition: “The two products will possibly contain the same text, but while the first will be a private product, the latter will be a publicly published one”(464) – the first product being the marked up version of the transcription and the second one being the published version. Marking up the memoir gave us a new understanding of it. While we were transcribing it, we only got vague understandings of our portions that we transcribed. However, once we went back and read the entirety of the memoir, we then knew what Elizabeth Grundy was writing about. The markup was what really helped us piece together some of the emotions Grundy felt. Just reading some of the text and solely focusing on picking out emotion really made me feel a connection to Grundy. These selections for tags are what helped us understand the text. Pierazzo describes the process of selection as, “what we choose to represent and what we do not depends either on the particular vision that we have of a particular manuscript or on practical constraints”(465). For us, the process of selection was to introduce us to tagging and to help us gain a deeper understanding of the text.

 

The process of collaborating as an editorial board really made me understand how much goes into producing texts. Communication is essential when working as a part of a team. When we first began marking up our pages, we had to figure out how we wanted certain things tagged. In a Google Document, we wrote down some of the general tags we had to talk about. We decided that if a name had a prefix before it (ex. “Br.” or “Revd.”) then we would include the prefix as a part of the tag. We agreed to tag indirect names (ex. “My daughter” or “My son”) only if the real name of the person had been tagged. The one we probably discussed most about was how to tag God, Savior, and Lord. Some group members believed they should be tagged as a person name whereas some members believed they should be tagged as role names. Eventually, we agreed to have it tagged as a role name. A quote from Pierazzo actually describes this situation perfectly: ‘An ‘‘i’’ is not an ‘‘i’’ because it is a stroke with a dot over it. An ‘‘i’’ is an ‘‘i’’ because we all agree that it is an ‘‘i’’’(466). Overall, I feel as if it were fairly simple being able to communicate with a group of four to complete this task, but that once you start working with more people and larger documents, then it really could become difficult.