Batesford/brencheslee

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charlotte smith

Batesford/brencheslee

Legg inn av charlotte smith » 29 jun 2006 22:18:01

can make mistakes just like we all can. They can make assumptions
also.
That's why you need to read the original primary document.

WIll Johnson
_____________________

I wonder if you have read every primary document for the proofs you have for your genealogy. especially the medieval documents. We have to trust some transcriptions unless one proves them wrong. If we read every primary document ,latin, french, etc. I am sure most of us could not do it. Agan, how can you say the document was wrong when you haven't read the orginial.. You are assuming to much. You read the original document and prove it wrong.


charlotte c smith

Tim Powys-Lybbe

Re: Batesford/brencheslee

Legg inn av Tim Powys-Lybbe » 29 jun 2006 23:17:17

In message of 29 Jun, charcsmith@verizon.net (charlotte smith) wrote:

And W Johnson had written, adding in his level of quoting:

can make mistakes just like we all can. They can make assumptions
also. That's why you need to read the original primary document.

I wonder if you have read every primary document for the proofs you
have for your genealogy. especially the medieval documents. We have
to trust some transcriptions unless one proves them wrong. If we
read every primary document ,latin, french, etc. I am sure most of
us could not do it. Agan, how can you say the document was wrong
when you haven't read the orginial.. You are assuming to much. You
read the original document and prove it wrong.

I think the last is a perfectly acceptable statement of methodology.
And the first may well be an unattainable counsel of perfection.

Some of us, me particularly, cannot read medieval documents. Physically
I cannot read the writing, I have no idea about the abbreviations they
used and certainly I do not know the meaning of the words they used, as
used in their time frame.

Let's have a true story (apologies if I repeat myself here): I have a
brother who is the Real Genealogist of our family. He has done excellent
work from documents in record offices around the country (as a teacher
during school holidays). He had got his degree in Latin and Greek.
Some years back I had got hold of some slightly post medieval family
deeds and offered them to him as I thought he would be very interested.
He took one lood at them, saw they were in Latin and promptly said he
could not read this and they should be given to an archivist at a Record
Office (which I did). This astonished me, that even a Latin scholar,
albeit of the wrong period, refused to look at the original documents
because he knew he would read them wrongly.

So what can I do? The normal practice is to read the translation by a
scholar. A scholar is someone who can read the writing and can see the
words and does have a very good idea what the words mean in those
contexts. We do have one or two scholars appearing on this group and I,
for one, am very grateful for their contributions. Mostly I, and
perhaps a few others, have to accept what the scholars say.

The problem with this is which scholars to accept. To some extent the
answer lies in their reputation. Good scholars get known for this. The
various CP authors, Round, Clay, Keats-Rohan, they are all good
scholars, they could all read the real original documents and give a
good account of them.

But even this is not enough, as times pass more documents are found and
interpretations change. So the old scholars are not always right. One
has to use a little judgement of who to accept, though it may be better
to sum up the arguments and say that the reality is unclear.

The next problem is that of abstracts. They are not scholarly
translations, they are shortened interpretations of what is thought to
be the core of the documents concerned. That is they are two steps
removed from the originals, the first step being that of translation
into a modern tongue. Abstracts are not as reliable as scholarly
translations, though they are enormously valuable and I would not turn
my nose up at what they relate. Most of the internet sites of record
offices only publish abstracts, they are not publishing (translations
of) the original documents.

At this stage a relevant question is what is better:

(a) An account of a family made by a scholar from original documents
(or photos of such or transcriptions of such)?

(b) An account made by us from abstracts?

Either can be wrong.

So what, you may wonder? To me it is important that people say where
their information comes from, then we will have a better knowledge of
how much it can be relied on. The main question is whether people are
prepared to be honest and open enough about where their information
comes from and what the limitations are in their drawing conclusions
from what they have read.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org

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