Transcription criteria for Catalan texts from the 16th-19th centuries: a methodological proposal

Abstract

This paper presents a proposal of transcription criteria for documentary texts written in Catalan between the 16th and the 19th centuries, that is, from the Early Modern period up to the standardization of the language in the early 20th century. The transcription of documentary texts constitutes a vast source of linguistic information about different periods in the history of Catalan –and of any language. However, the absence of a unified system to deal with this documentation —which includes everything from correspondence and inventories to legal and administrative texts— can make linguistic analysis, corpus labelling and lexicalization of materials challenging. Existing editions have so far provided various solutions, often applying different criteria regarding spellings, abbreviations, punctuation, accentuation, and other features. Thus, many phenomena remain difficult to study, while a large body of documentation from this period still awaits transcription. In response to this need, the aim of this study is to present a methodological proposal for transcription criteria that enable the systematic treatment of documentary sources from the 16th to the 19th centuries, a set that is still poorly represented in corpora and scholarly editions despite being essential for understanding linguistic variation and written usage during this period.
The proposal includes (1) the definition of a set of metadata for document headers; (2) the establishment of transcription criteria; (3) conclusions that underline their usefulness for research and digital dissemination, and (4) the practical application of these criteria through real examples. Regarding the transcription criteria, a dual presentation of the text has been adopted, ideally accompanied by a digital facsimile of the original document. This approach consists of a faithful transcription, which reproduces the graphic and phonetic features of the original with the greatest possible accuracy, and a normalized transcription, which provides a version adapted to current orthographic standards through systematic graphic and phonetic regularization. This threefold presentation –digital facsimile, faithful transcription, and normalized transcription– aims to establish an editing model that is useful for different types of researchers. For the formal analysis of preserved documents, paleographers may consult the facsimile directly. For the study of spelling practices or the graphic representation of phonetic phenomena of the period, the faithful transcription offers a more accessible reading than the original while preserving all its linguistic features. For the analysis of morphological, syntactic, or lexical phenomena, or for research in related disciplines such as history, law, or cultural studies, the normalized transcription presents the text in a way that minimizes the difficulties posed by graphic variation and the lack of standardized punctuation in the original sources. The preservation of line numbering in both transcriptions allows users to move easily between the transcriptions or between either transcription and the facsimile whenever necessary.

The proposal includes (1) the definition of a set of metadata for the document header; (2) the establishment of transcription criteria; (3) conclusions that underline their usefulness for research and digital dissemination, and (4) the practical application of these criteria in real examples.