“The process of selection is inevitably an interpretative act: what we choose to represent and what we do not depends either on the particular vision that we have of a particular manuscript or on practical constraints.” (Elena Pierazzo 2.1) Through collaborative work on the transcription of the Powell Diary along with applying TEI-compliant XML markup to our transcriptions, I was able to gain a better understanding of the text and the collaboration process.
When we first began to work on this project of transcribing the Powell Diary, I did not think that it was going to be a challenge. My first assumptions were that transcription would be a fairly easy task that would not need collaboration to complete. However, through the close readings along with the Prosopography that we were able to do over the past two weeks, I now understand that the editing process is a very challenging topic that involves several people’s inputs, knowledge, and time.
“While transcribing, translating (or substituting) the symbols in the manuscript page into the graphemes that are available from the tool the editor is using for transcription, informed choices need to be made on what to include because it is relevant and what can be safely omitted.” (Elena Pierazzo 2.4) One thing that I believe was the toughest challenge that our group faced during the transcription and Prosopography process, was determining the meaning of specific words in context with the reading at hand. Throughout the TEI process, understanding the meaning of certain words in lines of text was sometimes difficult. For example, in the TEI-complaint XML markup image to the right, I at first thought that Waquallenpank was an object by the context it was placed in.
However, after further research along with help from Professor Faull, I was able to determine that Waquallepank was actually the name of a place in the Powell Diary instead of an object. In addition, I also thought that it was challenging to determine the meaning of some words in the Powell Diary when they were not Enlgish. For instance, in the image below, I could not determine whether the word Bescheidenhei was a person or a trait.
Because of Powell’s German ties, many German words were used throughout the Powell Diary which made the transcription process at times much more ambiguous and hard to understand. However, through much time and effort, our class was able to successfully collaborate to produce a digital edition of the Powell Diary. Because of all of the success that our class has had with this process, I support Pierazzo position that digital editions should be used and are beneficial and much cheaper to publish.