Transcript

“ How far any critic could presume to form a judgment upon any “transcript,” especially an imperfect “part,” of a work, we leave to the experience of those accustomed to the criticism of old writings. But the reviewer has farther concealed the nature of the “transcript” said to have been exhibited to Sir Walter Scott. After the originals of the Vestiarium were in the possession of its editor, there never was made more than one “transcript,” that alluded to by the reviewer as “a transcript obtained by a gentleman in the north.” ”

“ The rate cannot always be uniform: the professional training of scribes can rarely obliterate individual differences of accuracy and conscientiousness, and moreover the current standard of exactness will vary at different times and places and in different grades of cultivation. The number of transcriptions, and consequent opportunities of corruption, cannot be accurately measured by difference of date, for at any date a transcript might be made either from a contemporary manuscript or from one written any number of centuries before. ”

“ Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor AEschylus, nor Virgil even -- works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; ”

“ From the whole of these Materials Lists were prepared of the Matters to be admitted, referring to the several Records, Manuscripts, and Books, in which they were respectively preserved or published. All the Transcripts and Collations made of these Matters were compared with each other, and with the printed Copies. The Transcript which, on full Examination, appeared to be made from the most authentic Source was used as the Copy of the Text to be printed: All the other Transcripts and Collations of the same Instrument, as also the printed Editions, were then compared and collated with this Copy ”

“ A Transcript of the Statutes of Wales 12 Edw. I. is preserved in the Tower of London, with the Writ annexed, by which that Transcript was required from the Exchequer at Westminster; [15] where it was entered of Record, according to the Usage which formerly prevailed of sometimes inrolling Statutes in Courts of Justice. [16] Transcripts and Exemplifications of Statutes have also been occasionally found in various other Repositories. [17]
4. ”

“ Taking the whole transcript together (which must be done, unless each successive settlement is to embrace all the details of the previous one) , it is plain, that every item is to be found, from first to last. ”

“ I have a copy (of which I send you a transcript) which has some very good lines in it, that are not in the printed copy; and besides, if you will compare it with the original, you will find that you left off without going through with the epistle. The fable of the country and city mouse is as prettily told as any thing of that kind ever was: possibly, if you look over your papers, you may find that you finished the whole; if not, I enjoin you, as a task, to go through with it: and I beg of you, do not suffer an imperfect copy to stand, while it is in your power to rectify it [1] . ”

“ In this case we have not been furnished either with a copy of the certificate on which the motion depends or with an agreed statement of what it contains. In fact, there is nothing on which we can act unless we go to the transcript. ”

“ Nothing is omitted from the transcript which is a part of the record in the court below. On the contrary, the only complaint is that the clerk has not appended to the transcript his certificate that it contains the full record. Such a defect, in a case of contumacy, might be remedied by a mandamus, but no application of that sort is made nor is it suggested that there are any grounds for such an application. ”

“ The books of the New Testament have had to share the fate of other ancient writings in being copied again and again during more than fourteen centuries down to the invention of printing and its application to Greek literature.
7. Every transcription of any kind of writing involves the chance of the introduction of some errors: and even if the transcript is revised by comparison with its exemplar or immediate original, there is no absolute security that all the errors will be corrected. ”

“ So complete an inversion of the ordinary and natural distributions of evidence always demands, it need hardly be said, a thorough verification before it can be accepted as certain. It does however without doubt occasionally occur, and it arises from a state of things fundamentally the same as in the former cases, with the difference that here a transcriber has happened to make that alteration which was needed to bring back the reading of the autograph, that is, has in the course of transcription made a successful Conjectural Emendation. ”

“ In some places, indeed, where the contents of a letter are of very little interest, it has been thought sufficient merely to give an abstract instead of a transcript, placing the abstract in what is believed to be its true place in the series chronologically. ”

“ The transcript, upon which the case was heard in the supreme court, was stipulated by the attorneys for the respective parties to be 'a full, correct, true, and complete transcript of the proceedings in said cause on appeal, and of all the pleadings in said cause, of all orders on demurrer, of the findings of the court and conclusions therefrom, and of the judgment, and of notice of intention to move for a new trial, and of the notice of appeal, and of the bill of exceptions and statement of motion for new trial.' In short, this supplemental transcript is a mere excrescence. ”

“ But boys were never employed on the Gospels, or Church service books, these being reserved for men of perfect age, who would bring greater care to their responsible task. We have even the copy ordinarily set for beginners in the monastic scriptorium, a doggerel line, introducing every letter of the alphabet:
“Adnexique globum Zephyrique Kanna secabant.” That the labour of transcription was often exceedingly irksome, is evident from sundry notes scattered over these manuscripts. “As the sick man desireth health,” writes one, “even so doth the transcriber desire the end of his volume.” ”

“ Thirdly, By noting the Omission, in other Copies, of a Word or Sentence inserted in the Text: In this Case the Word or Sentence in the Text is included between Crotchets with a Reference, and in the Note the Copies which omit such Word or Sentence are particularized.
The Entries on the Statute Rolls and Records of Chancery are very seldom broken into separate Paragraphs; though other Manuscripts are more frequently so divided. In all Cases where there is any Division of Paragraphs in the Record or Manuscript, the like Division has been made in the Transcript. ”

“ This deep concern which a copyist felt for his work—for he had a solicitude that his copy might endure both time and use and long remain as a monument to himself—lent an artistic taste and, often, a religious devotion to the creditable transcription of a book, especially to the copying of the Bible or a part of the Bible. ”

“ When said writing is certified and registered in the manner hereinbefore prescribed, and it be proven to the court that said writing is lost, or that it is not in the hands of the party wishing to use it, then the record of the same, or a transcript of said record, certified to by the recorder under his seal of office, may be read as evidence without further proof.' Chapter 2, tit. ”

“ The transcript has become a part of the records of this court, which we cannot permit to be mutilated or destroyed. Its contents are accessible here, and the original record remains in the circuit court. If information is desired, either source may be resorted to. ”

“ The whole transcript from the beginning professes to be a bill of exceptions, and is so styled in the caption, and the verification by the signature of the judge cannot be restricted to the last sentence of the connected history of the case which precedes. ”

“ This transcription is based on images digitized from a microform copy made available by the University of California, Davis. These images have been posted on the Internet Archive at:
archive.org/details/OxenfordDayWellSpent
In general, this transcription attempts to retain the formatting, punctuation and spelling of the source text, including variant spellings such as “good by” and “wont” (instead of “won’t”) . In a few cases where the quality of the images made a word or a punctuation mark hard to read, the obvious reading was considered the correct reading without comment. ”

“ Are there any topical interests you have that we could help you with in order to find your feet here? If nothing else, perhaps you would like to help us clean up the OCR of our Proofread of the Month - fixing a red page should only take a minute or two. If there is another work you would like to see a high fidelity edition of, we'll find it and set up a transcription project. ”

“ As regards Intrinsic Evidence, it must, to attain complete certainty, be worthy of the second form of affirmation noticed above, that is, be so exactly and perfectly suitable to the place that it cannot but be right; or, to attain reasonable probability, it must be quite suitable to the place positively, and free from all incongruity negatively. As regards Transcriptional Evidence, it must be capable of explaining how the transmitted text could naturally arise out of it in accordance with the ordinary probabilities of transcription. ”

“ Associated words: intromittent, infibulation, copulatory, copulate.
copy, n. transcript, reproduction, transcription, replica, replication, facsimile, duplicate, pasticcio, counterpart, counterfeit, imitation, apograph, estreat, exemplification, protocol, porotype; pattern, model, original, example, precedent; manuscript.
copy, v. transcribe, reproduce, trace, duplicate; imitate, ape, follow; exemplify. ”

“ Contrast of real and apparent excellence is in any given variation an indispensable criterion as to the adequacy of the evidence for justifying reliance on Transcriptional Probability.
36. Fortunately variations conforming to this normal type are of frequent occurrence; variations, that is, in which a critic is able to arrive at a strong and clear conviction that one reading is intrinsically much the most probable, and yet to see with equal clearness how the rival reading or readings could not but be attractive to average transcribers. ”

“ Proper names, technical expressions, quotations from foreign languages, and frequent change of subject, are all likely to cause difficulty to a scribe and error in his work.
Careful and continuous regard to the various kinds of errors and defaults that are found in transcription will enable us to judge whether a reading which it is suggested stood in the archetype of our text is likely to have been corrupted to the reading, or readings, which stand in the extant manuscripts or editions. ”

“ To each county there should also be appointed one or more competent persons as collators, to correct the errors of the transcribers.
I throw out these rough hints in the hope that some of your correspondents will furnish their ideas on the subject, till we at last arrive at a fully practicable plan of carrying out Mr. Wyatt Edgell's suggestions, and, at all events, obtain transcripts, if not printed copies, of every register in the kingdom. ”

“ But readings answering to this description cannot be judged rightly without taking into account the general characteristics of other readings exhibited by the same or allied documents. The comparison leaves little room for doubt that they merely belong to an extreme type of paraphrastic alteration, and are not essentially different from readings which betray an equally lax conception of transcription, and yet are transparently guiltless of any fraudulent intention. In a word, they bear witness to rashness, not to bad faith. ”

“ Dalton could never have ventured to supply them in such a form without the original before him. It is clear, therefore, that his copy was the literal transcript, and that of Fenn the modern version.
‘Again, in Letter xxxi. of the same volume, on the second last line of page 137, occur the words, “that he obey not the certiorari.” On this passage occurs the following query—“The word for ‘obey’ seems unintelligible. Have I not erred from the original in my copy?” Another case will show how by this examination the errors of the original transcripts were eliminated. ”

“ Even while these were still in existence it was necessary to transcribe them in order that many persons in many places might possess and read them. In the work of transcription, however careful the transcriber might have been, errors of various kinds necessarily arose; some from mistaking one letter for another ”

“ TRANSCRIPTION. A term which in ils strict meaning should be the exact equivalent of Arrangement, but which in practice implies a different, and in most cases a far less worthy production, since the transcriber rarely if ever fails to add something of his own to the work he selects for treatment. Among the earliest examples of the transcription in this sense are the versions of tunes, sacred and secular, contained in the Virginal Books, which no doubt were executed to order, or to show off the skill of some illustrious performer. ”