21 March 2023
In recent weeks, Prof. Martin Volk (Zurich) presented the impressive results regarding computational linguistics tools to examine the Heinrich Bullinger letters.
On 24 February 2023, on the occasion of celebrating the 500th anniversary of the very first letter of the HBBW (Heinrich Bullinger Briefwechsel), Prof Volk presented the impressive results, to date, that his team had produced using computational linguistics tools to examine the HBBW.
This presentation can be viewed here.
In the presentation you will find information on the letters to and from Heinrich Bullinger, on the goals of the BullingerDigital project and the principles that were used, and much more.
On 13 March 2023 Prof Volk made a presentation of the platform at Moore Theological College in Sydney, which is perhaps the largest Protestant seminary in Australia. Together with Rev Dr Mark Earngey, several researchers into the 16th century Reformation were present for an awe-inspiring presentation of the use of AI in this manner. This was especially the case as Prof Volk had presented new features added to the platform since the February presentation in Zurich. There was both lively discussion and an informative Q and A session.
Even though the correspondence was written primarily in Latin (75%) and Early New High German (25%) other languages were also used (French, Italian, Greek). Nonetheless, the new technology is capable of recognising the handwritten texts and accurately digitise them (with a small error rate). This is despite the handwriting styles of many different authors.
Read also the article on our website on BullingerDigital.
