Related papers: WAXAL: A Large-Scale Multilingual African Language…

We introduce the Universal Speech Model (USM), a single large model that performs automatic speech recognition (ASR) across 100+ languages. This is achieved by pre-training the encoder of the model on a large unlabeled multilingual dataset…

We present improvements in automatic speech recognition (ASR) for Somali, a currently extremely under-resourced language. This forms part of a continuing United Nations (UN) effort to employ ASR-based keyword spotting systems to support…

This paper reports on the semi-supervised development of acoustic and language models for under-resourced, code-switched speech in five South African languages. Two approaches are considered. The first constructs four separate bilingual…

Accents play a pivotal role in shaping human communication, enhancing our ability to convey and comprehend messages with clarity and cultural nuance. While there has been significant progress in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR),…

Approaching Speech-to-Text and Automatic Speech Recognition problems in low-resource languages is notoriously challenging due to the scarcity of validated datasets and the diversity of dialects. Arabic, Russian, and Portuguese exemplify…

This paper reports on the development of a large-scale speech recognition model, Whale. Similar to models such as Whisper and OWSM, Whale leverages both a large model size and a diverse, extensive dataset. Whale's architecture integrates…

One of the major challenges for developing automatic speech recognition (ASR) for low-resource languages is the limited access to labeled data with domain-specific variations. In this study, we propose a pseudo-labeling approach to develop…

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems have been evolving quickly and reaching human parity in certain cases. The systems usually perform pretty well on reading style and clean speech, however, most of the available systems suffer from…

High-resource language models often fall short in the African context, where there is a critical need for models that are efficient, accessible, and locally relevant, even amidst significant computing and data constraints. This paper…

This work presents an extensive and detailed study on Audio-Visual Speech Recognition (AVSR) for five widely spoken languages: Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic, and French. We have collected large-scale datasets for each language except…

The development of speech technologies for languages with limited digital representation poses significant challenges, primarily due to the scarcity of available data. This issue is exacerbated in the era of large, data-intensive models.…

Despite the growing advancements in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models, the development of robust models for underrepresented languages, such as Nepali, remains a challenge. This research focuses on making an exhaustive and…

The Open Whisper-style Speech Models (OWSM) project has developed a series of fully open speech foundation models using academic-scale resources, but their training data remains insufficient. This work enhances OWSM by integrating YODAS, a…

Whisper's robust performance in automatic speech recognition (ASR) is often attributed to its massive 680k-hour training set, an impractical scale for most researchers. In this work, we examine how linguistic and acoustic diversity in…

Child literacy is a strong predictor of life outcomes at the subsequent stages of an individual's life. This points to a need for targeted interventions in vulnerable low and middle income populations to help bridge the gap between literacy…

We present the Pashto Common Voice corpus -- the first large-scale, openly licensed speech resource for Pashto, a language with over 60 million native speakers largely absent from open speech technology. Through a community effort spanning…

The CMU Wilderness Multilingual Speech Dataset (Black, 2019) is a newly published multilingual speech dataset based on recorded readings of the New Testament. It provides data to build Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech…

Arabic is known to present unique challenges for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). On one hand, its rich linguistic diversity and wide range of dialects complicate the development of robust, inclusive models. On the other, current…

Nowadays, speech is becoming a more common, if not standard, interface to technology. This can be seen in the trend of technology changes over the years. Increasingly, voice is used to control programs, appliances and personal devices…

We explore the performance of several state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition (ASR) models on a large-scale Arabic speech dataset, the SADA (Saudi Audio Dataset for Arabic), which contains 668 hours of high-quality audio from Saudi…