Hi Mike I have been told that much of the transcription work for both companys was done in this Country (England or rather the UK) That is also true of the 1911 on FMP which as anyone can see is pretty dire as far as transcriptions go So although part of the problem is no doubt due to overseas transcribers with little knowledge of the local geography its hard to say what percentage of errors are due to that reason However in the main I can understand the majority of transcription errors (or rather misinterpretations) and the main problem is the handwriting of the enumerators apart from the 1911 which is in the hand of the householder or whoever they coerced into filling in the schedule Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we researchers looking back *knowing* what the name is can see what it should be, if anyone has done any volume of transcription work they will know just how difficult it is Apart from the difficulty of reading or interpreting the handwriting (which in itself is a transcription of the household schedules and therefore prone to its own errors) there is the problem encountered by some transcribers where you lose concentration because of the monotonous nature of it, not that its uninteresting but just repeating the same fields for many entries, often for places and people you have no personal interest in The same would have been true of the enumerators copying the schedules, I have several examples where the birth places are a line out and in one case the details are exactly right except for the surname which is completely different, I know its the right family as the address and all other information matches Where we get the Somalia for Somerset and the like I believe it is due to the quick select boxes found in some transcription recording software You key in the start of the place and it gives you a drop down selecting box with the alternatives, in many cases I believe its simply an error by the transcriber selecting the wrong option as they try to speed through the transcription, no doubt they were pressed to complete pages in as quick a time as they were able to achieve For those interested in the subject as I am they may be interested in the following which I transcribed a while back as I found it very relevant to the subject of enumerators errors and I think goes some way to explain how errors crept in due to pressures on the enumerator to finish in a timely fashion ---------------------------------- 1851 Census (from Histpop) Forms and Instructions p39 Allowances to Enumerators For various duties performed with respect to the census of the Population; including the delivery and collection of all necessary forms, the enumeration of houses in the district, and of the persons resident therein on the night of March 30th 1851, and the subsequent completion of his Enumeration schedule. £0 /18s/0d Note:- The above pay is subject to a deduction of 5s, if the Enumeration Schedule is not delivered into the hands of the Registrar before the 8th day of April 1851 If the Enumerator's District contain more than 300 inhabitants, an additional fee of 1s for every 60 persons duly enumerated above 300 In every District containing more than 25 inhabited houses, an additional 1s for every mile above 5 miles necessarily traversed by the Enumerator, in visiting every house within his District; but not including any distance traversed by him between his own place of abode and the first and last houses visited ------------------------------- Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) > The bulk of the problems, both on Ancestry and FMP, stem from the fact that the > transcribers were not native English speakers. Hence the sometimes laughable > mis-transcriptions, like Somalia for Somerset. The number 1 rule of any > transcription process is: Write What You See! If your first language is not > English, then I can easily see, from examination of the images, how some of the > errors have been made. > > -- > Regards, > Mike Fry > Johannesburg