Hello again. All due apologies for my flip response regarding mistakes in transcription. For all the mistakes that creep in there are multitudes of correct information, and more and more of it available via the Internet. This wouldn t be available without the untold hours and hours put in by so many people, and we so often forget that someone has actually done the work; it didn't just happen". I for one am so glad to be able to actually find "my" people. It is sometimes amusing to see another's take on what is so clear to me, but kudos to those who make it available. We are reminded once again that an index is a very valuable aid - then we need to check the originals before committing information to our trees. The frustration comes from knowing something "should" be there and not finding it in an index in order to find the right direction to the original. With thanks and appeciation to those who do so that we can, Marie -------Original Message------- From: mjcl Date: 11/21/06 16:07:47 To: Norman Lee; [email protected] Subject: Re: [OEL] Translation Help Audrey, That's why, when doing transcriptions for public consumption, it's so important to have a checker. We are human, and all fallible! Al the best, Martyn ----- Original Message ---- From: Norman Lee <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; [email protected]; John <[email protected] net> Sent: Tuesday, 21 November, 2006 10:58:36 PM Subject: Re: [OEL] Translation Help Having compiled a very minor index myself from a calendar which, in itself, is a type of index, all I can say is that I find it amazing how accurate some of these lists are. The calendars my friends and I looked at were 19th century lists of probate documents. We inspected all the documents listed for our large ancient parish, took details of the documents, thus producing a fuller description of each entry, and made them into an alphabetical index. Each entry was checked several times over by all three of us and it took us two years to finish the work. Needless to say, we are bound to have made mistakes because we are only human but we did our level best and have accepted any corrections that were submitted to the records office after publication. I think there were only five and so, since these represented a minute percentage of the total, we didn't feel too badly about it. We have been congratulated and thanked for our efforts by more than one researcher. Although we may want to shoot the person who compiled an index and made a mistake in transcription, it isn't beyond possibility to check back with the records office or even to access original documents. As many on this list will have realised, transcription of Old English isn't always easy and mistakes will always happen. With experience and consultation with others, we can often guess that a mistake has been made and can ask the records office for their advice. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]>; "John" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 6:26 PM Subject: Re: [OEL] Translation Help >I agree with the shooting - mis-transcription gives us all headaches - but > how many of your own ancestors are mis-indexed because of a > mis-read/mis-transcription? Some we'll never find (in an index) because we > cannot possibly guess at every incorrect way someone else sees the same > name > We will find these ancestors and their records, but by actually looking > around, not by an index entry. > > It also helps if the transcriber is familiar with the place names of the > area - we have found a lot of errors in the Hawaii records (e.G., census > entries indexed on Ancestry) that are plainly because the transcriber > wasn't > from there and had no idea of what would be correct, and just guessed. > > Marie > > -------Original Message------- > > From: John > Date: 11/20/06 10:50:32 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [OEL] Translation Help > > At 17:41 20/11/2006, [email protected] wrote: >>If so, what did the transcriber >>guess? > > > If the transcriber guessed anything they need taking out and shooting :-D > > I agree with Percer and brass but the last word is vague. It always > helps in cases like this if there are a few other words included as > reference points. > > John