The Worst Printing Job Ever or an Amazing Feat?
Post date: Feb 1, 2011 11:28:27 PM
Digitizing old documents involves quite a lot of work. You usually first scan the document and then use an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program to convert the scan to editable text. No OCR program does that job 100% correctly so manual corrections are always needed. Often, the older the document the more problematic the scan quality and therefore the more corrections have to be made manually. In addition, you have to stay alert and check if a mistake is OCR related or maybe a typo in the original, in which case it should be kept as is.
One of the Haggadot I digitized this way was a Haggadah printed by A.M. Luncz in 1901 in Jerusalem. It is a Hebrew Haggadah with English translation. I did not have to scan it because a found a scanned copy online.
But while correcting the OCR created editable text I ran into far more mistakes than usual, notwithstanding the fact that the scan itself is quite clean. I was even more amazed to discover that most of these mistakes appear in the original and were NOT OCR related!
While doing my research I have been looking at quite a few translations comparing them and must say that although some are better than others, NONE are of as poor an editing quality as the one Luncz produced. This Haggadah is FULL of typos, spelling mistakes and grave errors. Did the printer drink the four cups of wine before setting the print?
Here some examples:
The letters "p" and "q" , "b" and "d" and "u" and "n" are regularly mistakenly interchanged e.g. the child who is too young to ask, ,שאינו יודע לשאול is called "he who hath not capacity to inpuir" (that should be inquire) also צא ולמד becomes "Search, and enpuire" and אברהם (Abraham) is misspelled as "Adraham" . We find the word "decame" instead of became, etc. Although this could be a common printer mistake because letters were set in mirror script, it should not have happened in such large quantities within one book.
The translation of the havdala is wrong because the blessing for the havdala is translated as "who made a distinction between holy and not-holy" (which is the correct translation of the blessing said on regular Saturday nights) instead of "between holy and holy" which is the blessing we say if Passover night falls on Saturday night. The Hebrew text does give the correct blessing
Other mistakes are words like "firstboren", "we are taugat that he did not go down" (taught), "the eterinal" (eternal), etc.
I inquired with several interest groups if anyone knew anything about this printer and/or his sloppy work? The only reply I received was "By now I don't think you can get a refund…" So I decided to delve a bit deeper into the history of this Haggadah and its printer.
Abraham Moshe Luncz was born 160 years ago, in 1855 in Kovno, Lithuania. He was a Russian scholar who came to Jerusalem at the age of 13. He studied there at a yeshivah until he was expelled for his attempts to set up a public library. He decided to become a printer and printed a large volume of work until his death in 1918. He published a 12 volume periodical called "Jerusalem", annual calendars and specialized in publications connected to the Land of Israel. In the exploration of the Holy Land, Luncz has rendered great services from the historical, geographical, and physical standpoints, through his guide-books for Palestine, his Palestine annuals, and his Jerusalem almanac [i]. In addition, he published sacred books such as a part of the Talmud and our Haggadah.
Luncz was a renowned public figure, member of many committees including one that created the Hasanovitz Library which would become the impetus for both the Hebrew University and the National Library. He organized the first Printers' Union in Jerusalem and was politically involved enough for the Turks to arrest him for publishing poems they felt were subversive.[i]But his endeavors become even more impressive when we realize that Luncz was struck with blindness at the age of 25!
Yes, Luncz was a blind printer. Towards the end of the 19th century, the type setting process could be done almost completely mechanically[i].
Several methods had been devised whereby the printer could use a keyboard to create the type setting necessary. Two systems were widely used by printing houses at the time Luncz printed his Haggadah: The Linotype Machine and the Ludlow Typograph. With Luncz's experience as printer, he should have been able to type blind to get the required text. However, the type of mistakes with inverted letters seems to indicate that he typeset the English translation manually. (Almost no mistakes in the Hebrew).
During manual typesetting, the printer takes the letters (sorts) from a type case with one hand, placing them one at the time into a composing stick held in the other. The letters are placed by the setter from left to right, upside down and in mirror script. > This can cause quite some confusion, and may have been the origin of the saying to "mind your p's and q's". This is especially the case if you are blind and have to feel the letters to know which one to choose.
Luncz printed his first Hebrew Haggadah in 1890 and printed a total of three Haggadot in 1901, two in Hebrew only and the one with English translation[i].
As all his Hebrew Haggadot are without the mistakes mentioned, it seems Luncz used in 1901 automated type setting for his Hebrew texts and manual setting for the English. Maybe his automated machine did not do Roman fonts? Still, I would say, the fact that he printed this Haggadah at all, being blind, is utterly amazing – a truly amazing feat - and deserves a lot of respect. Far more than I originally was willing to give him.
[i] http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10186-luncz-abraham-moses
[i] http://www.dlir.org/archive/archive/files/bies_vol-19_1-2_1955_p1-3_8882d9df1f.pdf (Hebrew)
i] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting
[i] See Yudlov, I. (1997) Haggadah Thesaurus, Magnus Press, Israel.
