The paper discusses some results obtained as part of an ongoing project
at the Slavic Institute of Heidelberg University to produce automatic transcriptions
of an early 18th century trilingual printed dictionary (Fedor Polikarpov’s Leksikon
trejazyčnyj) and, on a preliminary basis, of a 17th century trilingual manuscript (Epifanij
Slavineckii’s working copy of his Greek–Slavic–Latin dictionary) using the handwritten
text recognition (HTR) platforms Transkribus and eScriptorium. It is argued that there
are considerable advantages to employing such tools in terms of the simplification and
acceleration of work on multilingual edition projects. Moreover, a comparison of our
experience working with Transkribus and eScriptorium is given, along with an overview
of the practical benefits and challenges of working with each of these platforms.