Author Topic: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?  (Read 88864 times)

Offline Peter Bathe

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #72 on: Friday 07 October 16 08:15 BST (UK) »
The "Long S" usually foxes the more inexperienced transcriber - Rufsell for Russell etc - but is understandable, as are, indeed, many transcription errors.

My biggest bugbear is that unwillingness of major sites to admitted transcriptions were wrong in the first place and keep the entries indexed under the original transcriptions, even when they are clearly wrong. The sites' users have gone to much trouble to bother sending in corrections and can provide "chapter and verse" as to why corrections are necessary.

They might suggest there is an alternative - but why not get rid of the totally misleading version?

Some of the sites are also unwilling to accept the version provided by the transcriber. I volunteered to transcribe for one site and was given "modern" registers of marriage - those where the brides' and grooms' surnames appear not only in the box completed by the registrar, but also as their own signatures. I looked at both (and also the registrars' entry of the fathers' names) and my transcriptions were "bounced" if I chose their own signatures (often very clear signatures) over the scrawl of the registrar which could be interpreted differently.

Offline judb

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #73 on: Saturday 08 October 16 01:14 BST (UK) »
Absolutely agreeing with you, seigebatteries.  It's extra annoying when it's the first letter of a name which has been mistranscribed.  Perhaps it's the good old $$ and the corrections sent in happen automatically but it would take a human to change the original.

Judith
DYER - Wilts, London, Somerset, MIDLANE - Hants, Wilts, SONE - Hants, WRIGHT - London, Hants, SEAGER - Deptford, DWYER, FERGUSON - Victoria, MASON - Woodford Vic, BALLARD - South Wales, GOULDBY - Lowestoft
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Offline Andrew Tarr

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #74 on: Wednesday 12 October 16 23:24 BST (UK) »
They might suggest there is an alternative - but why not get rid of the totally misleading version?

It's because of a slavish and rigid refusal to relax the rule of Type What You See, even when it should be clear to all what the correct version is.  A common explanation is that transcribing has been done by those unfamiliar with the language or the handwriting.  Some sites do accept submitted alternatives, but retain the incorrect version, perhaps to 'keep a handle' on it.
Tarr, Tydeman, Liversidge, Bartlett, Young

Offline dawn-in-nz

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #75 on: Friday 14 October 16 22:38 BST (UK) »
I was always under the impression that most if not all of the census on ancestry had been transcribed by word recognition software (not sure if that's exactly what you call it). That's why whoever/whatever did the transcription doesn't actually KNOW that Fanny Arbuckle aged 6 can't be a grandmother!

One day soon they will get computers to perform transcribing.  They will probably be more accurate than human transcribers.

Not read any further posts on this thread but this is already happening....computer generated transcriptions which has been mentioned previously on RC.

Annie
I live in NZ & am researching:-
The WILSONs of Longnor Staffordshire, Winster Derbyshire, Birkenhead Cheshire thence to New Zealand.
http://tinyurl.com/kua7g57


Offline Peter Bathe

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #76 on: Saturday 15 October 16 07:11 BST (UK) »
That's why whoever/whatever did the transcription doesn't actually KNOW that Fanny Arbuckle aged 6 can't be a grandmother!

Humans can't be trusted to spot the impossibility of 6-year-old grandmothers; 60-year-old new mums; or multiple births spread over three or four months. You can tell that by the number of trees with these absurdities on Ancestry - often the result of blind acceptance of poor transcriptions but more often the result of wishful thinking.

Offline hurworth

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #77 on: Saturday 15 October 16 07:43 BST (UK) »
Perewae James Martin on the 1891 census in London.  Perhaps it was transcribed in New Zealand?

It looks like Percival to me.

Offline PrawnCocktail

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #78 on: Saturday 15 October 16 09:05 BST (UK) »
Perewae James Martin on the 1891 census in London.  Perhaps it was transcribed in New Zealand?

It looks like Percival to me.

One of the Northamptonshire parishes must have been done by a Spanish speaker - the Thomas's were transcribed as Gomez!
Website: http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~towcesterfamilies/genealogy/
Towcester - anything, any time
Cheshire - Lambert, Houghland, Birtwisle
Liverpool - Platt, Cunningham, Ditton
London - Notley, Elsom, Billett
Oxfordshire - Hitchcock, Smith, Leonard, Taunt
Durham - Hepburn, Eltringham
Berwickshire - Guthrie, Crawford
Somerset - Taylor (Bath)
Gloucestershire - Verrinder, Colborn
Dorset - Westlake

Offline andrewalston

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #79 on: Saturday 15 October 16 10:03 BST (UK) »
It's because of a slavish and rigid refusal to relax the rule of Type What You See, even when it should be clear to all what the correct version is.  A common explanation is that transcribing has been done by those unfamiliar with the language or the handwriting.
One of my pet hates is when the transcriber guesses at the letter without engaging the brain, such as the family transcribed as "Leddon" rather than "Seddon", even though the capital letter matched exactly the one at the start of "Son".

And don't get me started on about the long "s" !
Looking at ALSTON in south Ribble area, ALSTEAD and DONBAVAND/DUNBABIN etc. everywhere, HOWCROFT and MARSH in Bolton and Westhoughton, PICKERING in the Whitehaven area.

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Offline phenolphthalein

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Re: The worst Ancestry transcription ever?
« Reply #80 on: Saturday 15 October 16 10:45 BST (UK) »
Someone may have said this before. If so sorry.

I'm not a computer whiz BUT
One can not use OCR for handwriting I think.
The reason OCR works for print is straight lines,
even letter spacing,
standard characters to recognise etc.

If one observes TROVE NLA's Aust newspapers
then WHEN:
Fancy characters are introduced it often gets it wrong
If the tracking device runs crocked [correction crooked] then several lines can be mucked up,
if it stops short then part or full lines are lost.

The great beauty with NLAs newspapers is
 the fact all can view
and no private companies are involved
BUT also many wonderful Aussies
are correcting the transcription as they go.
If someone gets it wrong
next person corrects it.

Though it would be rather nice if they did
an automatic correction
of "tbe" to "the"
Regards and thank you
phenolphthalein

[Hopefully this is how one is supposed to correct]