| --- |
| language: [luo] |
| license: cc-by-4.0 |
| multilinguality: monolingual |
| task_categories: [text-to-speech, automatic-speech-recognition] |
| tags: [dholuo, luo, speech, tts, asr, african-languages, low-resource] |
| pretty_name: Dholuo Speech Data (Pooled) |
| size_categories: [10K<n<100K] |
| --- |
| |
| # Dholuo Speech Data (Pooled) |
|
|
| A **~191.5-hour** Dholuo (Luo) speech corpus, pooled from two independent sources |
| and filtered to only genuinely transcribed audio. Part of the |
| [AfroNet](https://github.com/osinkolu/afronet-tts-data) multi-language TTS data |
| effort. |
|
|
| ## Sources |
|
|
| - [**Anv-ke/Dholuo**](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Anv-ke/Dholuo) — African Next |
| Voices, a pilot data-collection effort in Kenya led by the KenCorpus Consortium (a |
| coalition of Kenyan universities and research centers), funded by the Gates |
| Foundation. 91,672 clips, 186.1h, `source` = `anv_ke`. **Gated on HuggingFace** — an |
| account must click through the access request on the dataset page before the API |
| can download it. |
| - **Mozilla Common Voice 26.0**, Dholuo (`luo`) locale, accessed via the |
| [Mozilla Data Collective](https://mozilladatacollective.com/) mirror |
| (`datacollective` Python SDK). `train` split only. 4,033 clips, 5.3h, `source` = |
| `common_voice`. Crowdsourced, community-validated read speech, CC0-1.0. |
|
|
| These two sources are independent (different collection institutions and |
| methodologies), so no overlap/deduplication concern applies here, unlike some other |
| sources in this collection. |
|
|
| ## Structure and what "transcribed" means here |
|
|
| The source splits data into `train`/`dev`/`dev_test`; only **`train`** is used here |
| (`dev`/`dev_test` are held-out evaluation partitions, same policy we apply to DSN's |
| splits for the Nigerian-language releases). |
|
|
| Within `train`, two categories are pooled together: |
| - **Scripted** — read from a prepared script, 100% transcribed by construction. Each |
| row also ships an English `translatedText` alongside the native transcript (not |
| included in this release's `text` field, which is native-language only). |
| - **Unscripted** — topic-prompted natural speech. The large majority carries a real, |
| reviewed transcript (Anv-ke's own workflow marks each as `approved`/`rejected` |
| after review); only transcribed rows are included here. |
|
|
| **A text-encoding bug in the source, fixed during ingestion:** `unscripted` |
| transcripts in the raw parquet files are mojibake — UTF-8 bytes that got decoded as |
| Latin-1 somewhere upstream. This is fixed via a `encode('latin-1').decode('utf-8')` |
| round-trip that's a safe no-op on already-correct text (a genuine non-Latin-1 |
| character can't itself be Latin-1-encoded, so the fix only fires on rows that |
| actually need it) — `scripted` transcripts, which are correct as shipped, pass |
| through unchanged. |
|
|
| All audio is standardized to **16 kHz mono FLAC** (lossless), 1–30 second clips. |
| Source audio is real WAV, embedded directly in the source's parquet files (no |
| WebM-mislabeling issue like some other sources in this collection). |
|
|
| ## Format |
|
|
| The dataset ships as **WebDataset-style tar shards** (`shards/shard-00000.tar` …, ~1 GB |
| each, one `{key}.flac` file per clip) plus a single manifest (`manifest.parquet` / |
| `manifest.jsonl`): |
|
|
| | Column | Description | |
| |---|---| |
| | `key`, `shard` | which tar file + entry holds this clip's audio | |
| | `text` | transcript (native Dholuo script) | |
| | `duration` | seconds | |
| | `source` | `anv_ke` or `common_voice` | |
| | `dataset_id` | always `0` | |
| | `split` | `train` / `val` (250 clips held out for evaluation) | |
| | `speaker_id` | Anv-ke's `recorder_uuid`, or Common Voice's `client_id` | |
| | `gender` | speaker metadata where available | |
| | `domain` | e.g. `scripted/Agriculture and Food`, `unscripted/Education and Technology` (Anv-ke rows only; `null` for Common Voice rows) | |
| | `dbfs`, `clip_ratio`, `sil_ratio` | cheap DSP quality proxies: loudness, fraction of clipped samples, fraction of near-silent frames | |
| | `has_disfluency` | always `false` — this source doesn't flag disfluencies | |
|
|
| ## Usage |
|
|
| ```python |
| from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download |
| import pandas as pd, tarfile, io, soundfile as sf |
| |
| mp = hf_hub_download("Professor/dholuo-speech-data", "manifest.parquet", repo_type="dataset") |
| df = pd.read_parquet(mp) |
| |
| row = df.iloc[0] |
| shard_path = hf_hub_download("Professor/dholuo-speech-data", f"shards/{row.shard}", repo_type="dataset") |
| with tarfile.open(shard_path) as tar: |
| audio_bytes = tar.extractfile(f"{row.key}.flac").read() |
| arr, sr = sf.read(io.BytesIO(audio_bytes)) |
| ``` |
|
|
| The tar shards are also directly readable by the [`webdataset`](https://github.com/webdataset/webdataset) |
| library for streaming training pipelines. |
|
|
| ## Intended use & limitations |
|
|
| Built for **Dholuo TTS/ASR research**, in particular as finetuning data for a |
| multilingual TTS model that doesn't natively support Dholuo. Source recordings cover |
| 2 dialects pooled together (per the upstream dataset card); dialect is not preserved |
| as a separate field in this release. This is a **research aggregation**; usage |
| should respect African Next Voices' own terms. |
|
|
| ## License |
|
|
| CC BY 4.0 for the Anv-ke portion, per the upstream [Anv-ke/Dholuo](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Anv-ke/Dholuo) |
| release; CC0 1.0 for the Common Voice portion, per upstream Common Voice. |
|
|
| ## Acknowledgments |
|
|
| Deep thanks to the **KenCorpus Consortium / African Next Voices** for the Anv-ke |
| portion (Gates Foundation-funded), and to **Mozilla Common Voice** and its Dholuo |
| contributors for the Common Voice portion, hosted via the **Mozilla Data |
| Collective**. |
|
|
| This dataset was pooled by **Victor Olufemi and LyngualLabs** as part of the |
| [AfroNet](https://github.com/osinkolu/afronet-tts-data) multi-language TTS data effort. |
|
|
