Preserving the Tuvaluan language

Speak in Tuvaluan and we will write down the words. Check the words, fix any mistakes, and save. Every recording helps teach the computer to understand Tuvaluan.

Press the big button to speak
Getting ready...
or
The words you speak will appear here

Sautala

Have a conversation in Tuvaluan. Speak and the computer will try to understand and respond. Tap any word to see its dictionary definition.

Press the button to speak Tuvaluan
Ready to listen

Read Aloud

Take a photo of Tuvaluan words — from a book, newspaper, letter, or sign — and read them out loud. We will turn your voice into written words.

  1. 1 Take a photo
  2. 2 Check the words
  3. 3 Read out loud
  4. 4 Save

Choose a photo of Tuvaluan text, or use the buttons below

How It Works

The Language

Te Gana Tuvalu

Tuvaluan is an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 11,000 people in Tuvalu, a small island nation in the central Pacific. It had no existing speech recognition technology before this project.

The Approach

Samoan Bridge

Samoan and Tuvaluan share significant phonological and lexical overlap. We fine-tune Facebook's MMS model (pre-trained on 1,100+ languages including Samoan) using CTC-aligned Tuvaluan audio recordings.

The Data

Training Data

Our models are trained on a combination of licensed, publicly available, and internally generated data. We use only data that we are permitted to use and follow strict privacy and compliance standards throughout the training process.

Collaboration

Collaborators Welcome

We welcome collaborators. Send a request to be added to the repository.

Request Repo Access →

14%
Mistake Rate
~30h
Training Data
10k
Segments
AI
Brain

This system uses a smart AI that learned Samoan first, and we taught it Tuvaluan. It listens to your voice and guesses the words based on what it has learned from others.

Contributors

People who have given their voice to help teach the computer to understand Tuvaluan.

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Word-Matching Game

Help us by matching words together. This teaches the computer which words sound alike in Tuvaluan.