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Exploring historical texts can be like piecing together a complex puzzle, where every document offers a glimpse into the lives, ideas, and cultures of bygone eras. For researchers, turning these handwritten documents into accessible, searchable texts is often a time-consuming process. Fortunately, tools like Transkribus have revolutionised this field, enabling scholars to unlock the secrets of historical manuscripts with greater ease and accuracy.
In this post, we’ll look at five fascinating projects where researchers utilised Transkribus to shed light on historical material and unlock our past.
1. Transcribing the personal album of Zoila Aurora Cáceres
The personal album of Zoila Aurora Cáceres, a Peruvian feminist, writer, and political activist, had remained a mystery for years due to the challenges of deciphering its multi-modal content, which included newspaper cuttings, illustrations, and handwritten text. So a team from the Laboratory of Digital Humanities (Hlab) of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru turned to Transkribus to tackle this intricate project, transcribe the album, and make it accessible to a broader audience.
"Zoila Aurora Cáceres's personal album opens up avenues for an alternative and more complex understanding of Peru's intellectual and political history, and especially of women's history at the turn of the century in Latin America," said Ainaí Morales, one of the researchers working on the project. “There are many silences in her history that can be filled to some extent with the information contained in her album.”
Read more about this project here.
2. Navigating the transcription of Dutch prize papers
The Dutch Prize Papers, captured ship documents from the 17th and 18th centuries, provide a wealth of information about maritime trade, warfare, and everyday life. However, due to their handwritten nature, transcribing the 38,000 documents posed a significant challenge to researchers. That’s when project coordinator Marijcke Schillings decided to use Transkribus.
The team used a sample of the collection to create customised layout and text recognition models, capable of reading the handwriting contained in the documents. They then applied these models to the rest of the collection, creating searchable, digital versions of these historical papers. “The Prize Papers are a global resource for research,” Marijcke explained. And thanks to this project, that resource is now more accessible than ever.
Discover the details of their journey here.
3. Uncovering the secrets of the Portuguese Inquisition
Hervé Baudry, a senior researcher at the New University of Lisbon, embarked on a project to study the voluminous records of the Portuguese Inquisition. The challenge was immense: the thousands of pages of handwritten Portuguese documents from the 16th to the 19th centuries required careful transcription to uncover their hidden stories.
Using Transkribus, Baudry and his team created a text recognition model tailored to the complex scripts of the Inquisition records. The result was a searchable corpus that revealed critical insights into this dark period of history. Baudry commented, “[Transkribus] was able to break a double secret, one historical, the other, paleographical.”
Read more about Baudry’s work here.
4. Discovering a lost play by Lope de Vega
In a thrilling discovery, researcher Álvaro Cuéllar identified a previously unknown play by Lope de Vega, one of Spain’s most celebrated playwrights. The play, hidden among thousands of manuscripts in the Spanish National Library, had been overlooked due to the difficulties in reading early modern Spanish handwriting.
Cuéllar utilised Transkribus to develop a custom text recognition model capable of deciphering large numbers of manuscripts from the Spanish Golden Age, before stylometrically analysing them. It was during this analysis that Cuéllar made his dramatic discovery. “I was processing a bunch of manuscripts [...] Then one of these manuscripts, La francesa Laura, aligned unexpectedly with Lope de Vega in a very strong way. I sent a message to my colleague [...] that we had something special.”
Read more about this remarkable find here.
5. Reviving the diary of Karl Benedikt Haase
William Barton, a researcher specialising in classical philology, uncovered a diary penned by Karl Benedikt Haase, a 19th-century German professor of Ancient Greek. The diary, filled with Haase’s detailed observations on medicine, culture, and society, provided a unique window into Paris’ philhellenic movement during this period. However, deciphering Haase’s intricate script proved a daunting task.
Using Transkribus, Barton developed a text recognition model tailored to Haase’s handwriting, which significantly accelerated the transcription process. “Transkribus’ unique ability to be trained for this kind of very complex manuscript work is a huge benefit for us,” Barton remarked. This project not only prepares this unique historical resource for further analysis but also highlights the enduring value of personal narratives in understanding history.
Learn more about Barton’s project here.
Bringing the past to the present
These five projects demonstrate the versatility and impact of Transkribus in unlocking historical texts. From the personal album of a feminist pioneer to the bureaucratic records of the Portuguese Inquisition, researchers are transforming the way we interact with the past. With tools like Transkribus, historical manuscripts are no longer confined to archives but can be brought to life for scholars and the public alike.
Interested in using Transkribus for your research?
Transkribus has been used for research projects around the world, helping to create searchable, digital versions of paper resources. We have several subscription plans aimed at researchers, from our solo 'Scholar' plan to the 'Team' plan, which is ideal for small research groups. You can view all the available subscriptions on our Plans and pricing page.
