Quechua Speech Datasets in Common Voice: The Case of Puno Quechua
This work addresses the lack of speech data for under-resourced language communities, such as Quechua speakers, to enable inclusive voice technology, though it is incremental as it builds on existing platforms.
The paper tackled the data scarcity problem for under-resourced Quechua languages by integrating them into Common Voice, resulting in 191.1 hours of Quechua speech with 86% validation, including 12 hours for Puno Quechua.
Under-resourced languages, such as Quechuas, face data and resource scarcity, hindering their development in speech technology. To address this issue, Common Voice presents a crucial opportunity to foster an open and community-driven speech dataset creation. This paper examines the integration of Quechua languages into Common Voice. We detail the current 17 Quechua languages, presenting Puno Quechua (ISO 639-3: qxp) as a focused case study that includes language onboarding and corpus collection of both reading and spontaneous speech data. Our results demonstrate that Common Voice now hosts 191.1 hours of Quechua speech (86\% validated), with Puno Quechua contributing 12 hours (77\% validated), highlighting the Common Voice's potential. We further propose a research agenda addressing technical challenges, alongside ethical considerations for community engagement and indigenous data sovereignty. Our work contributes towards inclusive voice technology and digital empowerment of under-resourced language communities.