Re: VMs: Image Source, Accuracy of Transcriptions

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Apart from Glen's efforts, I believe we have at the
> moment three major sources:
> 
> 1) voynich.now - based on D'Imperio and enlarged by
> Jim
> Reeds, Michael Roe, and various others. 
[...]
> 2)  FSG - by Friedman and the First Study Group, 
[...]
> 3)  Takeshi Takahashi - from a current Yale
> copyflow. 
[...]
> Stolfi's interlinear is a collation of these three
> - I believe a majority opinion of the three.  

Note that the first was transcribed in Currier, and 
the second in FSG notation. Gabriel merged the
two, translating both (using the BITRANS software)
into the Eva alphabet. This is a translation which
causes no loss of information, except in cases where
voynich.now provided additional information in 
comments. (The comments were retained but not 
translated).
Takeshi transcribed directly in Eva.

Stolfi added Takeshi's transcription plus various
other partial ones to Gabriel's interlinear, and
in addition 'computed' a majority transcription
which he also added. This has become Stolfi's
interlinear.

> I believe that most people currently doing work are
> using Stolfi's interlinear.  It would be good to
> explicitly discuss the accuracy of this, which
> depends
> on accuracy of reading, interpretation of the glyph
> set, and quality of the working copy.  

Yes. The accuracy could only be established by
going back to a good-quality copy, e.g. Friedman's
originals. Without that, one can only estimate
by comparing the various different ones.
By its nature, the majority transcrtiption should
be the most accurate one. 
The real problem is that in order to assess the
accuracy, one really has to know which features
of the script are relevant and which ones aren't.
For example, GC is of the opinion that the different
curls in the various shapes of Eva-sh or 
Currier-Z are relevant, while none of the existing
files makes any distinction. Similar questions
could arise over the shape of the tail of
Eva-y / Currier-9 or the various intermediate
forms between Eva-r and Eva-s (Currier-R and 
Currier-2). If these details are relevant, then
none of the transcriptions are of top quality,
perhaps not even of sufficient quality.

We can only hope that they are not.

Cheers, Rene

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