# Kokborok Digitalisation Project

The **Kokborok Digitalisation Project** is an initiative to curate and enhance parallel data for the Kokborok-English language pair. This project builds upon the SMOL dataset by Google, available on Hugging Face, and involves modifying and correcting it to better reflect the nuances of the local Kokborok dialect.

## From the Author  

> *"Language is a living, breathing entity—constantly evolving, shaping cultures, and connecting generations. When we digitally preserve and document it, we don’t just safeguard words; we ignite progress, making knowledge more accessible and enriching for all."*  

— ***Dr. Sudhamoy Debbarma***  


 


## Overview

- **Objective:** To collect, modify, and enhance data from various sources to create a high-quality, parallel dataset for the Kokborok-English language pair.
- **Dataset Origin:** The dataset is derived from the SMOL dataset, which provides professionally translated data for 115 under-represented languages. This project adapts that dataset to serve the needs of the Kokborok-speaking community.

## Dataset

- The dataset consists of parallel translations in **Kokborok-English**.
- It is a curated and improved version of the **SMOL dataset**.
- Data corrections are based on local linguistic expertise and dialectal accuracy.

## Usage

- The dataset can be used for **machine translation**, **linguistic research**, and **language preservation efforts**.
- Specific instructions on how to access or download the dataset will be added soon.

## Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you wish to contribute corrections or additional data, please open an issue or submit a pull request.

## License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

## Acknowledgements

We thank the authors of the SMOL dataset and the related research work, whose contributions have significantly influenced this project. Special thanks to all contributors supporting under-represented languages and dialects.

## Citation

If you use this work or any of its components in your research, please cite the following references:

```bibtex
@misc{caswell2025smol,
      title={SMOL: Professionally translated parallel data for 115 under-represented languages}, 
      author={Isaac Caswell and Elizabeth Nielsen and Jiaming Luo and Colin Cherry and Geza Kovacs and Hadar Shemtov and Partha Talukdar and Dinesh Tewari and Baba Mamadi Diane and Koulako Moussa Doumbouya and Djibrila Diane and Solo Farabado Cissé},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2502.12301},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.12301}, 
}

@misc{jones2023gatitos,
      title={Bilex Rx: Lexical Data Augmentation for Massively Multilingual Machine Translation}, 
      author={Alex Jones and Isaac Caswell and Ishank Saxena and Orhan Firat},
      year={2023},
      eprint={2303.15265},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.15265}, 
}
```

### TODO
* Gather phonetic data
* Text to speech model