Tag Archive | Claude

Further experiments with AI and genealogical documents

May23

A recent 2nd cousin DNA match (click here for that story) inspired me to explore German records from Bavaria. So I decided to try AI to read the handwriting and translate it. First however, I did some more work on my Norwegians.

My home page at Claude

There is more than one free AI out there, so I ran an experiment. First I submitted a not great scan to all three of the better known ones, Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini. This is what I found:

  • Claude told me it was hard to read and only gave me a partial.
  • ChatGPT made stuff up that sounded totally plausible, but did not seem to be anything like the original Norwegian.
  • Gemini made an effort to translate it and did well, but organized it into bullet items.

So my new method is to upload the same document to Claude and Gemini and merge the result. One thing I like about both of them is that they remember my recent efforts in the left hand sidebars (on Gemini ask for the sidebar in settings). So far I have not used either one heavily enough to be asked to upgrade to a paid version, unlike ChatGPT which has already requested that.

Next I tried some handwritten German documents. In my opinion Gemini did the best job. Read on for how each AI performed.

Continue reading →

Working with the Norwegian Farmbooks and AI

Apr30

My past process to get a translation of what a Norwegian farm book says about my ancestors and their farm was somewhat laborious. First I made a good scan of the page, then I used a Norwegian OCR program to get the text extracted, and finally I asked google to translate that resulting text. Often the result sounded stilted and certain words did not translate correctly, like farm (“pa”) would be garden. Click here for my past post about that process. 

Today I tried Claude AI on a few not so great photos of pages from my copy of the Etne-soga farmbooks for a distant relative and wow, just wow. Not only was the process much easier, just upload a photo, but the translation was way better and more informative.

Here is an excerpt from my exchange with Claude AI:

Green text is added to this exchange with Claude AI

 

When you click the down arrow it even explains the Norwegian abbreviations! This is what it told me.

Notes:

“f.” = født (born), “d.” = død (died)
“bygsla” = leased/rented farmland (a common tenure arrangement in old Norway)
“lensmannen” = the local bailiff/sheriff
“rdlr.” = riksdaler, the currency of the time
“Lausøyret” = movable personal property/chattels
“leiglending” = a tenant farmer who leased land rather than owning it

The text cuts off at the bottom of page 573 — there is more to the entry on the following page.

I am amazed that Claude knew what the document was (a Norwegian genealogical record) and could give me information like that about common abbreviations and words. Previously Google translate had used “built” for “bygsla” as well as other slight inaccuracies.

This was all free! I would be happy to pay a small subscription fee for such a terrific service.

I have also used Claude AI for handwritten German records. Some it did well. Others it found harder but it always told me why, discussing that horrible medieval German script.

AI is bringing in a wonderful new era for us family history researchers.