I am excited to announce to you today that we have launched a crucial part of the YorubaName vision: audio.
One of the crucial elements planned for this dictionary since its inception has been a voice element. The project itself was conceived in part because of the problem of pronouncing Yorùbá names illustrated in this video of David Oyèlọ́wọ̀ on Jimmy Fallon’s show, a problem believed to be caused only by the absence of a place online where Yorùbá speakers, learners, and foreigners interested in the culture, can go to hear how names are pronounced.
The problem has finally been solved. We have incorporated an audio element into the dictionary. You can now click on the audio icon beside a name and hear how it is pronounced.
Try it out by searching for a name entry you’d like to hear pronounced!
A little word on the voice element
As I wrote in a blog post in April 2015, the biggest obstacle to achieving appropriate auto-pronounce was technology. There was no available computer voice in Yorùbá (and as far as we were concerned it had not been created before). So we had a choice of employing one person to pronounce all the names in the dictionary (a very tedious and expensive choice indeed), or creating – through speech synthesis – the technology that can do it automatically for every new addition. The latter option required only the knowledge of the tools necessary, and far less funding than having to bring someone to pronounce each entry in the dictionary.
We didn’t like that limitation and we committed to breaking it. We wanted to create an automatic Yorùbá voice for the dictionary. We also wanted to work towards interesting speech synthesis applications that can enhance African languages in technology.
Read: “What We Are Building Next” on Medium
We achieved the technical breakthrough as far back as 2015, as you would read in the blog post, but never had the funds to get complete the cycle. Hence, earlier this year, we proposed a crowdfunding on indiegogo effort to raise appropriate funds to complete the work.
We raised $1,672.
Through these funds and the generous time of volunteers, the work has now been completed. We no longer need to get one person to record all the names. The software will pronounce as many new names as are added to the dictionary from now on, whether they be 10,000 names or more.
I wrote the phonological rules for the application and provided the voice you now hear. Turning the language rules into software was done by Adédayọ̀ Olúòkun. Getting the work incorporated into the dictionary in a final deployment was done by Dadépọ̀ Adérẹ̀mí. We intend to add a female voice and improve on the output as time goes on.
Through this technology, we have solved one problem and enhanced this dictionary experience. But there are many more ways in which ideas of this nature can (and will) change the world by enhancing the African language experience in technology and on the internet. We hope to be a part of that future.
Hear the names
We hope you enjoy using the dictionary to hear the names pronounced, learning the names of your friends, and becoming more fluent in Yorùbá. Please let us know what you think, especially if some of the names do not render the way you expect them to. We assume that there will be a few glitches here and there and we look forward to fixing them.
