I am looking for an OCR software that does OK on older printed script text found in 1700s - 1800s texts and after recognition can store the original text and optionally translate it.
Currently I've been retyping printed books in German the best I can not being a German speaker and then once retyped using Google translate (which I know has its flaws) or manually translating them with a dictionary.
This is an example of the type of thing I am looking at from a Pennsylvania Newspaper in German from the 1790s. I am also looking at similar documents in German from what is now Germany or Switzerland in a similar printed script.
In this particular example above, and towards the end of when they stopped printing newspapers in German in the US they listed both English and German stories..
I am needing something that can provide some assistance to get a basic understanding of what something says in a semi-efficient manner to determine if a more precise translation is required and the examples are more likely to look something like this:
This example is from Google Books of an old German text, but Google Book's OCR (as I can select the text and copy and paste it) of this type of text is very low quality to the point of not being useful. I also have resources not in Google Books.
Is anyone aware of a consumer OCR program, preferably for Mac, that has the capabilities to simplify this process for me?