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You probably want to put it in front of an actual person and get them to transcribe it for you. I don't think there's any off the shelf OCR that will work parti

You probably want to put it in front of an actual person and get them to transcribe it for you. I don't think there's any off the shelf OCR that will work particularly well for it. I have a close family member who is a historian and frequently read and transcribed mid 19th to early 20th century German handwriting for his work. Many historians and archivists in Germany would have the ability to transcribe this for you if you reached out to them and paid for their time.

bluGill 3y ago
Look to the US not Germany. Many immigrant communities stayed with the old German and stript long after Germany had moved on. My dad was in high school when his church switched to English as the last German only menber died. don't assume this is German just because everyone calls it German. There are/were seneral 'low German' dialects. my grandpa never could understand natives when he toured Germany because all he knew was 100 year old German. (based on stories since he died I suspect he would have had little problem understanding Dutch)
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  Archivists in Germany will know how to read various forms of Kurrent. And yeah, of course it might not be Hochdeutsch. But anyone who can read the script will know pretty quickly if it's Platt, Swiss German, or something else entirely.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
OP might also find graduate students in history or literature departments who are willing to work for cheaper than a professional.
fhdkweig 3y ago
This is probably the best option. I can't find it now, but in 2020 on either Slashdot.org or here, there was a project trying to transcribe hundreds or thousands of old British rainfall records. The researchers made digital scans and posted the images online and had random users around the world transcribe them. They didn't care if a user did one or hundreds. I did about 20-50 before they were finished. What would have taken a paid team years was completed in only a week. Does anyone know a link to the article that announced it?

bluGill 3y ago

Look to the US not Germany. Many immigrant communities stayed with the old German and stript long after Germany had moved on. My dad was in high school when his church switched to English as the last German only menber died. don't assume this is German just because everyone calls it German. There are/were seneral 'low German' dialects. my grandpa never could understand natives when he toured Germany because all he knew was 100 year old German. (based on stories since he died I suspect he would have had little problem understanding Dutch)

sneed_chucker 3y ago
Archivists in Germany will know how to read various forms of Kurrent. And yeah, of course it might not be Hochdeutsch. But anyone who can read the script will know pretty quickly if it's Platt, Swiss German, or something else entirely.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

OP might also find graduate students in history or literature departments who are willing to work for cheaper than a professional.

fhdkweig 3y ago

This is probably the best option. I can't find it now, but in 2020 on either Slashdot.org or here, there was a project trying to transcribe hundreds or thousands of old British rainfall records. The researchers made digital scans and posted the images online and had random users around the world transcribe them. They didn't care if a user did one or hundreds. I did about 20-50 before they were finished. What would have taken a paid team years was completed in only a week. Does anyone know a link to the article that announced it?