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Transkribus

Transcribe Old German Scripts with Transkribus

Transkribus helps you to convert old letters, documents and chronicles from old German scripts such as Kurrent, Sütterlin, Fraktur or Antiqua into readable text. The Transkribus software enables you to automatically translate old handwritings with the help of artificial intelligence. 

Transkribus reads Kurrent, Sütterlin and modern handwriting for you. Try the power of Transkribus!

The AI model “German Handwriting M1” is used for this tool.

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How Transkribus helps you to translate Kurrent, Sütterlin, Fraktur or Antiqua to text

Decipher old German Handwritings with AI-powered Text Recognition

Automatically recognize your historical documents and turn them into normal text. Transkribus helps you to convert Kurrent, Sütterlin and Fraktur Script from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th century. There are a number of publicly available artificial intelligence models you can use. 

Manually transcribe and correct automatic translations

With the transcription editor you can manually transcribe your old German Scripts or you can correct transcription errors from the automatic transcription. The results of the automatic transcription can vary depending on the handwriting and the quality of the material.

Train your own AI text recognition models

You can also train specific text recognition models that are capable of recognising exactly the old German Script and the handwriting of your material

Search your old documents

With Transkribus you can search your documents for names and keyowords and you have also more advanced search options

Export your transcriptions

You can export your transcribed text as text documents or as PDFs. 

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Free Public AI-Models
See Public Models >>

How Transkribus works

Transkribus is a software that uses artificial intelligence to “learn” how to read Kurrent Script. For this, the software first needed to be trained with a number of pages that have been manually transcribed. This so called “Ground Truth” enables Transkribus to understand and read Kurrent Script.

The model “German Kurrent M2” for instance was trained with more than 550.000 words from many different handwritings. You can use this and other pretrained AI models to automatically recognize your Kurrent, Sütterlin or Fraktur documents and convert them into normal text. 

If you are able and willing to transcribe about 50 pages by yourself, you can also train a custom AI model. Your own model is then able recognize excactly the handwriting that you are working with. 

Example transcription of a letter of Goethe

Example of an old Recipe written in Kurrent Script

About old German Scripts

There are a number of old German Scripts that were used in the German speaking World between the 16th and 20th century. On the one hand, there were a number of handwritings including Kurrent Script, Sütterlin, Offenbacher Script. But there were also some printed Scrpits such as Fraktur or Antiqua. 

With the help of Transkribus accessing and searching a large number of historical documents – written in old German Scripts –  is today possible. By using one of the public models or a own model, thousands of historical documents can be automatically converted into text. 

Public AI Models for old German Scripts

PyLaia
ID: 32524
Transkribus German Kurrent M2
- Handwritten

Transkribus German Kurrent

By: Transkribus Team
German
German Kurrent, Sütterlin, Fraktur
5.29 (CER)
View & Try Model
PyLaia
ID: 35909
Transkribus German handwriting M1
- Handwritten

Transkribus German handwriting M1

By: Transkribus Team
German
Latin alphabet, German Kurrent, Sütterlin
4.70 (CER)
View & Try Model
PyLaia
ID: 37789
Transkribus Early Kurrent M1
- Handwritten

Transkribus Early Kurrent M1

By: Transkribus Team
German
German Kurrent
6.30 (CER)
View & Try Model
PyLaia
ID: 42164
Swiss German Kurrent 18th Century
- Handwritten

Swiss German Kurrent 18th Century

By: Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich
German
German Kurrent
5.90 (CER)
View & Try Model
PyLaia
ID: 48242
Preußische Regierungsberichte PyLaia
- Handwritten

Prussian governmental reports

By: Regine Jägers, Felix Selgert
German
Latin alphabet
3.00 (CER)
View & Try Model
PyLaia
ID: 45551
Paul-Goldmann_German-Kurrent_1889–96_V1
- Handwritten

Paul-Goldmann_German-Kurrent_1889–96_V1

By: Martin Anton Müller und Laura Untner (beide Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
German
German Kurrent
4.4 (CER)
View & Try Model

Pricing

Training, layout analysis, using Transkribus for manually transcribing, etc. – i.e., everything but text recognition proper is free of charge. Yet, you can also use  the Transkribus text recognition feature for free, as you get 500 free credits (i.e. about 500 pages) upon signup.

Your purchases will enable us to keep Transkribus alive into the future and keep this wonderful community going. Everything you need to know about buying credits you can find here.

FREE

Signing up is completely free
  • 500 Free credits on signup
  • Model Training
  • Layout Analysis
  • Manual Transcription
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PAID SERVICES

Handwritten Text Recognition
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