PDF Proofreading & Typesetting
Budget: $750 – $1,500 USD
I need a professional freelancer to correct OCR errors and typeset the corrected text to match scanned PDF books.
Source files are plain text files. pdf's of the originals that we want to match are provided, but no need to edit these pdfs.
Background: There are two out-of-print English-language books, the Sweet Songster and Thomas Hymnal, that we want to republish. They are song books, but there is no musical notation, so look like books of poems. We found pdf scans of the books along with OCR text. We're now looking for someone to correct the scanned and OCR'ed text and then typeset that to look like the original. The content is basic everyday language and does not require specialized knowledge or expertise. No understanding of the text is required, we just want to exactly match the scans of the originals.
Ideal Freelancer Should Possess:
- Enough English that we can communicate with each other, but the work is about matching an original exactly, so does not require an ability to do editing in English
- Ability to typeset to match the original scanned books, which has titles, drop caps, numbered paragraphs and slightly odd punctuation and indentation. Note that the typesetting is different between the books and varies between some songs within the books.
- Exceptional attention to details
See approach.pdf in the attached, where we have for the expected stages:
1. Scanned pdf
2. OCR'ed plain text (61,001 word Sweet Songster, 89,185 word Thomas Hymnal)
3. Corrected plain text example (first 1000 lines of the Sweet Songster)
4. Typeset MS Word example (page 17 of the Sweet Songster)
5. Final pdf example (page 17 of the Sweet Songster)
Both song books are more than the 25MB we could upload here, so we only posted the Sweet Songster. We will provide the Thomas Hymnal when that's possible.
Your responsibilities will include:
- Taking the provided Stage 1 references and Stage 2 OCR text and produce Stage 3 corrected plain text and Stage 4 typeset MS Word that matches the Stage 1 references.
- Correcting any inaccuracies or mistakes in the OCR results
- Typesetting to match original books
- Ensuring overall text quality and readability.
We are not in a big hurry, but it is important to us that the OCR errors are corrected and the final product match the original scanned books as closely as possible in size, font, spacing, line breaks, page breaks ...
Source files are plain text files. pdf's of the originals that we want to match are provided, but no need to edit these pdfs.
Background: There are two out-of-print English-language books, the Sweet Songster and Thomas Hymnal, that we want to republish. They are song books, but there is no musical notation, so look like books of poems. We found pdf scans of the books along with OCR text. We're now looking for someone to correct the scanned and OCR'ed text and then typeset that to look like the original. The content is basic everyday language and does not require specialized knowledge or expertise. No understanding of the text is required, we just want to exactly match the scans of the originals.
Ideal Freelancer Should Possess:
- Enough English that we can communicate with each other, but the work is about matching an original exactly, so does not require an ability to do editing in English
- Ability to typeset to match the original scanned books, which has titles, drop caps, numbered paragraphs and slightly odd punctuation and indentation. Note that the typesetting is different between the books and varies between some songs within the books.
- Exceptional attention to details
See approach.pdf in the attached, where we have for the expected stages:
1. Scanned pdf
2. OCR'ed plain text (61,001 word Sweet Songster, 89,185 word Thomas Hymnal)
3. Corrected plain text example (first 1000 lines of the Sweet Songster)
4. Typeset MS Word example (page 17 of the Sweet Songster)
5. Final pdf example (page 17 of the Sweet Songster)
Both song books are more than the 25MB we could upload here, so we only posted the Sweet Songster. We will provide the Thomas Hymnal when that's possible.
Your responsibilities will include:
- Taking the provided Stage 1 references and Stage 2 OCR text and produce Stage 3 corrected plain text and Stage 4 typeset MS Word that matches the Stage 1 references.
- Correcting any inaccuracies or mistakes in the OCR results
- Typesetting to match original books
- Ensuring overall text quality and readability.
We are not in a big hurry, but it is important to us that the OCR errors are corrected and the final product match the original scanned books as closely as possible in size, font, spacing, line breaks, page breaks ...