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I have a ton of handwritten German stuff from the 19th century. My grandmother could make a fair stab at it, but nobody left can read it. I've shown modern Germans and they are at a loss. Thanks for your idea, I will give it a look. Any tips on model/method/training?

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Try both Gemini Pro and ChatGPT. They are both outstanding at reading almost-unreadable documents. Use the highest thinking level your account supports.

(If you want to post a sample or two here, I'll try it. I like to collect difficult out-of-distribution test materials.)

This was about a year ago, and it was pretty rudimentary. I'd just drop in jpegs into ChatGPT and ask for a translation of small sections.

If I were doing it today, I'd probably do it in codex or code, have it develop a plan, look for better tools, etc.

Report back if you have success!

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