Nadëb Speech to Text: Preserving an Indigenous Amazonian Language with AI
Nadëb (mbj) is an endangered Nadahup language spoken by approximately 300–500 people in northwestern Brazil, near the border with Colombia. The language is concentrated along the Uneiuxi River and its tributaries in the state of Amazonas. With a small speaker base and no large digital corpus, Nadëb has been overlooked by mainstream transcription services. Speechyou changes that by offering a dedicated Nadëb speech to text model that converts audio and video into accurate subtitles and text.
Why Accurate Transcription Matters for Nadëb
The Nadëb people have a rich oral tradition of myths, songs, and historical narratives. These are at risk of being lost as younger generations shift to Portuguese. By using automatic transcription, communities can create written records of oral heritage. Teachers can add subtitles to educational videos, and researchers can transcribe interviews efficiently. The goal is not only documentation but also practical use in daily communication.
Challenges in Nadëb Automatic Speech Recognition
Nadëb presents several phonetic challenges for ASR:
- Tonal system: Three contrasting tones (high, mid, low) distinguish word meanings. For example, /bã/ (with high tone) means ‘to hit’, while /bà/ (low tone) means ‘to burn’.
- Nasalization: Oral and nasal vowels are contrastive, e.g., /ka/ vs. /kã/.
- Glottalized stops: Ejectives and implosives occur, such as /pʼ/ and /ɓ/, which are rare in world languages.
- Low resource data: With under 500 speakers, collecting enough training data is difficult. Speechyou overcame this through transfer learning from related Nadahup languages (Dâw, Hup) and synthetic tone augmentation.
Our model achieves around 85% word accuracy on clean recordings, a remarkable level for an endangered language. It outputs text in the standard Latin orthography with diacritics for tone and nasalization.
Use Cases for Nadëb Transcription
- Oral history preservation: Elders’ stories are transcribed to create a searchable digital archive.
- Language learning: Children can watch subtitled videos to read along with the spoken language.
- Subtitle generation: Community events, church services, and music videos get SRT/VTT subtitles.
- Linguistic research: Field linguists use the API to process hundreds of hours of recordings automatically.
- Accessibility: Deaf or hard-of-hearing Nadëb speakers can access video content with subtitles.
- Community media: Local radio and social media producers add subtitles for wider reach.
How Speechyou Supports Nadëb
Speechyou’s platform is designed for low-resource languages. Users upload audio or video files, select Nadëb as the language, and receive transcriptions with timestamps. The output can be edited in our web editor or exported as SRT/VTT. Our price model includes unlimited transcription in the Solo plan, making it affordable for communities and researchers. We also provide an API for batch processing.
Looking Forward
With continued use, the model will improve. Community‑provided recordings can be used to fine‑tune for specific dialects (Central, Southeastern, Northern). Speechyou is committed to supporting indigenous and minority languages, and Nadëb is a perfect example of how technology can aid linguistic diversity.
Try Nadëb speech to text today and help preserve this unique Amazonian language for future generations.
