Towards Digital Syriac Corpora: Evaluation of Tesseract 4.0 for Syriac OCR

Towards Digital Syriac Corpora: Evaluation of Tesseract 4.0 for Syriac OCRHugoye: Journal of Syriac StudiesSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/GCPLK7QM/tei

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2024-08-15-04:00

Born digital.

CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.EmilyChesleyJillianMarcantonioAbigailPearsonTowards Digital Syriac Corpora: Evaluation of Tesseract 4.0 for Syriac OCRhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/GCPLK7QMhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/GCPLK7QMhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/GCPLK7QMHugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies22:12019109-192This paper summarizes the results of an extensive test of Tesseract 4.0, an open-source Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine with Syriac capabilities, and ascertains the current state of Syriac OCR technology. Three popular print types (S14, W64, and E22) representing the Syriac type styles Estrangela, Serto, and East Syriac were OCRed using Tesseract’s two different OCR modes (Syriac Language and Syriac Script). Handwritten manuscripts were also preliminarily tested for OCR. The tests confirm that Tesseract 4.0 may be relied upon for printed Estrangela texts but should be used with caution and human revision for Serto and East Syriac printed texts. Consonantal accuracy lies around 99% for Estrangela, between 89% and 94% for Serto, and around 89% for East Syriac. Scholars may use Tesseract to OCR Estrangela texts with a high degree of confidence, but further training of the engine will be required before Serto and East Syriac texts can be smoothly OCRed. In all type styles, human revision of the OCRed text is recommended when scholars desire an exact, error-free corpus. Chesley, Emily, Jillian Marcantonio, and Abigail Pearson. “Towards Digital Syriac Corpora: Evaluation of Tesseract 4.0 for Syriac OCR.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 22:1 (2019): 109–92. Emily Chesley, Jillian Marcantonio, and Abigail Pearson, Towards Digital Syriac Corpora: Evaluation of Tesseract 4.0 for Syriac OCR, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 22:1 (2019): 109–92.Syriac studiesXIX-XXI CEXXI CEdigital