Talk:FamilySearch Indexing: US, Illinois, Chicago—Catholic Church Records, 1833–1910, Additional Helps

A response is being formulated. I think the Project Instructions need further clarification on how to handle the Latinized names in these records. The instructions do indicate that indexers should retain the Latin forms, but don't specify how to handle the case endings on these names. All the indexing fields are in oblique cases (child's name in accusative and parents' names in ablative). The normal practice in translating a Latin document is to transcribe names in the nominative case, and those with experience in Latiin documents will almost certainly want to do this with the names in this project. Conversely, indexers who don't know Latin will be very confused when they see a father's first name as "Joanne" (the ablative of "Joannes"), and when they get constant red boxes because these oblique Latin forms aren't in the lookup lists. I just opened a batch for arbitration in which indexer A retained the oblique forms and indexer B entered the names in nominative case. I'm going to return the batch because I don't want to ding indexer B for doing something resonable when the Project Instructions don't expressly say to do otherwise.