collectivat/ladino-karen-TTS

Ladino Text-to-Speech (TTS) Training Dataset

Dataset Description

This dataset contains a single-speaker speech corpus in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) recorded by a native speaker from Istanbul. The corpus was created for training text-to-speech synthesis models for this endangered language.

Dataset Statistics

• Speaker: Karen (native Ladino speaker)
• Recordings: 1987 segments
• Total Duration: ~3.3 hours
• Sampling Rate: 16 kHz
• Audio Format: WAV (16-bit, mono)
• Language: Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) [lad]
• Script: Latin alphabet

Content

The samples were automatically segmented from recordings of 30 articles from the weekly Ladino newspaper El Amaneser. The articles cover diverse topics including:

• Historical issues
• Current affairs
• Cultural events
• Politics
• Community news

Each recording is aligned with its transcription.

Data Fields

• audio: Audio file (WAV format, 16 kHz, mono)
• audio_id: Unique identifier for the audio segment
• text: Transcription of the spoken text

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the dataset
dataset = load_dataset("collectivat/ladino-karen-TTS")

# Access the first sample
sample = dataset['train'][0]
print(f"Text: {sample['text']}")
# Audio can be played directly in Jupyter notebooks
# or processed with audio libraries

Background

Ladino (also called Judeo-Spanish or Judezmo, ISO 639-3: lad) is the historical language of Sephardic Jews, descended from Old Castilian Spanish of the 15th century. After the Spanish Inquisition (1492), Sephardic Jews were expelled and welcomed into the Ottoman Empire, where they retained and evolved the language for over 530 years.

Today, Ladino is classified as a severely endangered language by UNESCO. This dataset is part of efforts to preserve and revitalize the language through modern technology, making it accessible for digital applications like text-to-speech synthesis, language learning tools, and documentation.

Curation

This dataset was curated as part of the project "Judeo-Spanish: Connecting the Two Ends of the Mediterranean" carried out by Col·lectivaT and Sephardic Center of Istanbul within the framework of the "Grant Scheme for Common Cultural Heritage: Preservation and Dialogue between Turkey and the EU–II (CCH-II)" implemented by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey with the financial support of the European Union.

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite:

Preparing an Endangered Language for the Digital Age: The Case of Judeo-Spanish

Ethical Considerations

• The speaker provided informed consent for the recordings to be used for research and language technology development
• Non-Commercial Use Only: This dataset is released under CC-BY-NC-4.0 license, which means:
  • ✓ You may use it for research and educational purposes
  • ✓ You may use it to develop non-commercial language preservation tools
  • ✗ You may NOT use it for commercial products or services
  • ✗ You may NOT use it to create voice impersonations or deepfakes
  • ✗ You may NOT use it for any purpose that could harm the speaker or the Ladino community
• This resource is intended to support Ladino language revitalization and documentation efforts
• Any synthetic speech generated from models trained on this data should be clearly identified as synthetic
• Users must respect the cultural significance of this endangered language and use the data responsibly

Contact

• Sephardic Center of Istanbul: sephardiccenter@gmail.com

Acknowledgments

The content of this dataset is the sole responsibility of Col·lectivaT and Sephardic Center of Istanbul, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

License

This dataset is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-4.0). This means you are free to share and adapt the material for non-commercial purposes only, with appropriate attribution.

This repository is developed as part of project "Judeo-Spanish: Connecting the two ends of the Mediterranean" carried out by Col·lectivaT and Sephardic Center of Istanbul within the framework of the “Grant Scheme for Common Cultural Heritage: Preservation and Dialogue between Turkey and the EU–II (CCH-II)” implemented by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey with the financial support of the European Union. The content of this website is the sole responsibility of Col·lectivaT and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.