Latin and Dutch

The Huygens Institute for History of the Netherlands, an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, is unlocking the Aldermen Records of ‘s-Hertogenbosch 1366-1811. Because the protocolbooks from the period 1500-1810 can be considered virtually inaccessible, we started to unlock this registers with Trankribus. This model is the first to recognise late medieval handwriting and is based on the registers of the aldermans court of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Brabant), written by the townclerck magister Petrus de Os senior. His handwriting can not only be found in several townseries like the protocolbooks from 1497 until 1542, but also in charters, cartularies and the towncronicle of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. The model is based on a protocolbook, containing the minutes of the charters on voluntary jurisdiction of the city. Most of the minutes are in Latin, only a few one are in Dutch. The trainingset is based on 105 pages with 46.638 words, written in late medieval gothic script.

The Character Error Rate on this model is 5,00 % on the validation set.

More information on the project can be found at: https://www.huygens.knaw.nl/projecten/ontsluiting-van-de-schepenregisters-van-s-hertogenbosch-1366-1811