Transliteration of German handwritten running script
What is a transliteration?
‘Transliteration’ refers to the literal transcription of handwritten texts from one writing system into another.
I offer the transliteration of German texts written in so-called cursive or running scripts (from the Latin currere = to run) into Roman letters and into English.
Also known as Gothic script or Blackletter, cursive running scripts were used in Northern European languages well into the 19th century - and in the case of German up to the first half of the 20th century (under Hitler’s regime, Blackletter was officially banned in January 1941). For genealogists and historians alike, knowledge of Blackletter can be a vital tool. A literal translation including annotations about abbreviations, misspellings, corrections or such may give clues about the writer (were they in a hurry, educated, interested in details?). But if you only want to learn about the content of a private document or a family owned letter, which might shed light on your family history, it may be preferable to bring the writer alive through an idiomatic translation.
Preliminary note
In order to capture the peculiarities of a handwriting, it is necessary to familiarise oneself with its characteristics.
Short texts can be particularly problematic because some letters only appear once. This makes proper names in older texts difficult to read, especially if they are place or personal names and contain lexical elements that do not correspond to the current norm (such as -bohm for -baum, i.e. tree).
Example: Transcription of a postcard from 1938 (private collection)
In the following postcard, names do not pose a problem:
As was customary at the time, address, date, and names are consistently written in Latin script, only the text itself is written in German cursive.
However, in this short example, the author made a mistake at the beginning of the sentence in line 11 with the word ‘ich’ (I). The small spelling mistake does not cause any problems for the transliteration, because the word can be clearly deduced from the context. Furthermore, the addition on the picture side of the postcard shows how a capital ‘I’ looks like in this handwriting. But that is not always the case.
Example of a transliteration:
Transliteration to Roman script
Fotos of both sides of a postcard
Pricing
Since it often takes a little longer to decipher short texts (see above), I charge a basic fee of €29 [24£] for each transliterated text plus €1,49 [1.23£] for each standard line of 53 characters.
In the example of this postcard written 1938 in German running script, my transcription into a typed, line-by-line annotated form would be charged as follows:
The text consisting of 394 characters (postcard text plus additions but without: address in Latin script, additional address information, and my additions in square brackets) is counted as 7.43 standard lines. At €1.49 per line, the price would be €10.85 + a basic fee of €29 = €39.85 or 33£. An additional transfer into English as requested (line-by-line literal translation or a more idiomatic translation) would cost an additional 10€/8,30£ in the shown example.
For very short and easily legible texts, I am happy to reduce the basic fee. For problematic texts, I reserve the right to agree on a higher price per line with you.
Please feel free to contact me for more details (see below: Kontakt)
or send me a good quality photo of your text, or for longer documents a few representative extracts,
as a basis for discussion.