Researchers use AI to unlock the secrets of ancient texts

Techxplore ^ | August 3, 2021 | University of Notre Dame

[SunkenCiv]

The Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland is home to approximately 160,000 volumes of literary and historical manuscripts dating back to the eighth century—all of which are written by hand, on parchment, in languages rarely spoken in modern times.

To preserve these historical accounts of humanity, such texts, numbering in the millions, have been kept safely stored away in libraries and monasteries all over the world. A significant portion of these collections are available to the general public through digital imagery, but experts say there is an extraordinary amount of material that has never been read—a treasure trove of insight into the world's history hidden within.

Now, researchers at University of Notre Dame are developing an artificial neural network to read complex ancient handwriting based on human perception to improve capabilities of deep learning transcription...

Scheirer said challenges remain. His team is working on improving accuracy of transcriptions, especially in the case of damaged or incomplete documents, as well as how to account for illustrations or other aspects of a page that could be confusing to the network.

However, the team was able to adjust the program to transcribe Ethiopian texts, adapting it to a language with a completely different set of characters—a first step toward developing a program with the capability to transcribe and translate information for users.

[SunkenCiv]

Good question. I’ve often wondered how many remain to be translated, I don’t think it’s a large percentage, and those in the best shape have probably already been done for a long while.

[PIF]

Are you claiming that everything printed after 1980 is available online?
—
No silly, just as a rule of thumb - somethings were digitized of course after 1981 up until say, as a rule, 2000, but by no means everything before 1980 because there was no internet and trolls were unknown - other than those that live under bridges.

Stop this pickiness, its a waste of time.

[alexander_busek]

No silly, just as a rule of thumb - somethings were digitized of course after 1981 up until say, as a rule, 2000, but by no means everything before 1980 because there was no internet and trolls were unknown - other than those that live under bridges. Stop this pickiness, its a waste of time.

Your initial remark was addressed to me, and appeared to be lecturing me on the fact that "old" meant "before 1980" - although my prior comments (to which you were ostensibly responding) ought to have indicated that I was already familiar with such facts and so didn't need lecturing.

Regards,

[PIF]

- other than those that live under bridges. Stop this pickiness, its a waste of time.

[wildbill]

There is such room for this meme to be explored in a fiction novel. Because of prior commitments and priorities, I simply don’t have the time left to me to do it.

I hope someone will see the potential and run with it.

[linMcHlp]

Translation is where AI has some value, if truthful - carefully quadruple-checked.