
Linguists estimate that at least half of the world's estimated 7,000 spoken languages will become extinct by the century's end, due to forces ranging from globalization to cultural assimilation.
Part of the challenge of documenting and revitalizing endangered languages is a lack of texts and speech recordings to work with. Seneca, a language of one of the six Iroquois Nations in North America, has only about 100 first-language speakers and several hundred more second-language learners.
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology is widely used to transcribe languages with millions or billions of speakers, like English and Mandarin. But it has only scratched the surface with languages like Seneca, which have vastly fewer speakers and significantly less data to work with.
Now a team of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, along with colleagues from the University at Buffalo, is tapping deep learning to bolster the ability of ASR. And while its focus is on Seneca, the project's vision encompasses the preservation of languages globally as well as an important part of our shared cultural history.
Knowing about different languages teaches us a lot about how our brain works, said Emily Prud'hommeaux, an assistant professor of computer science at Boston College and a research faculty member at RIT. When you document a language, you're preserving information not only about that language but also about how humans use language in general.
It's no coincidence that Prud'hommeaux and her team started with the Seneca language. Three members of the Seneca nation are part of the effort - a direct connection that is rare in research of this type, she said.
Leading the charge is Robbie Jimerson, a Ph.D. student in RIT's Golisano College of Computing and Information Science. He is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and is passionate about ensuring the survival of the Seneca language.
There's a big effort by the leaders of the tribe to preserve and promote our language, said Jimerson. I was looking for an opportunity to contribute.
Using GANs to Create More Language Samples Now in its third year, the project has had challenges when it comes to accumulating language data. Jimerson said the Seneca community can be guarded about what it shares with other people, so there wasn't an abundance of recordings of the language being spoken. He set out to change that.
He started by recording friends and elders who speak the language and asking them to record their friends. He found out whenever someone was speaking Seneca in public. He asked for family recordings of elders telling stories handed down from previous generations. And he grabbed any publicly available videos or recordings he could find online.
The team has fine-tuned an ASR model for Seneca, running it through generative adversarial networks to create more samples out of the limited number of recordings. The model turns wave files of the spoken language into streams of characters, while computing probability and making corrections.
The resulting data is fed into a deep learning model that in turn expands upon the ASR model's accuracy.
The team's networks run in two compute settings: on a nine-server machine learning lab running a variety of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, and on a university cluster of large servers, each running 10 NVIDIA Tesla P4 GPUs. Each cluster runs a range of deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow and Caffe.
The computer engineering cluster is for all students in the computer engineering department, and so they have to compete' for these resources, said Ray Ptucha, assistant professor of computer engineering at RIT, another collaborator on this project.
With access to these clusters at a premium, Jimerson tests code and checks the stability of models on a local machine running an NVIDIA TITAN X rather than inconvenience other students by running a model that might crash.
Achieving Better Accuracy So far, the team's efforts have brought the word error rate of its ASR model from 70 percent down to 56 percent. The goal, said Prud'hommeaux, is to get that rate down to 25 percent, which is where ASR systems were in processing English several years ago.
The more samples of spoken and written Seneca the team can accumulate, the more the error rate will decrease. (Today, English ASR models can achieve word error rates as low as 5 percent.)
The team's work is expected to help with language preservation efforts around the world.
Prud'hommeaux said the team has an agreement with an archiving institution that's a condition of a grant the project received from the National Science Foundation. The resulting language archiving database will be made available as a resource for other efforts seeking to document threatened languages.
Additionally, Prud'hommeaux said the team's work could prove helpful for any deep learning effort that has to make do with limited amounts of data.
Read more about the team's work in their research papers here and here.
Feature image: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) flag, via Wikimedia Commons.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
13/04/2026
ToolsOnAir Composition Builder 2026 Boilerplate
More Details: The Composition Builder 2026 application for macOS enables TV stations and Live Event broadcast...
13/04/2026
ToolsOnAr just:live pro 2026 Boilerplate
More Details: just:live pro 2026 is a Multi-Channel Live Production Playout solution for video and static or real-ti...
13/04/2026
ToolsOnAr just:play pro 2026 Boilerplate
More Details: just:play pro 2026 is a Multi-Channel automated 24/7 Master Control playout solution with SD, HD and U...
13/04/2026
ToolsOnAr live:cut 2026 Boilerplate
More Details: live:cut is an option to just:in mac pro 2025 and enables multicamera production workflows for up to 16 cam...
13/04/2026
ToolsOnAir Just In Mac Lite NDI 2026 Boilerplate
More Details: The Just In Mac Lite NDI application is a streamlined media capture solution designed specific...
13/04/2026
ToolsOnAir Just In Mac Lite 2026 Boilerplate
More Details: The Just In Mac Lite application is a streamlined media capture solution designed specifically for...
13/04/2026
ToolsOnAir just:in mac pro 2026 Boilerplate
More Details: just:in mac pro is a macOS-based client-server multichannel capture solution to record SDI, HDMI, N...
13/04/2026
Telos Alliance has announced that J nger Audio has joined the EBU ADM Implementers Group (ADM-IG) as a founding member. The group is focused on advancing ADM an...
13/04/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate its Alliance Partner ecosystem at NAB Show 2026 (Booth C2408, Central Hall, April 19-22), showing AMPP integrations across live pr...
13/04/2026
Media Links will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (Booth W2033), demonstrating IP transport solutions for live production including hitless protection technology, Xscen...
13/04/2026
NBC Sports has announced a programming, distribution, and sales partnership with...
13/04/2026
FloSports has promoted Chief Operating Officer Jayar Donlan to President, effective immediately. In his new role, Donlan will lead the company's commercial,...
13/04/2026
PanCam Pictures, the documentary production company founded by Paul Camarata, us...
13/04/2026
Mimir will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (North Hall, Booth N2850), demonstrating its cloud-native media production platform with new capabilities including Mimir Cu...
13/04/2026
BBright has announced that its IP Gateway now supports the Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST) protocol. The addition will be introduced at NAB Show 2026 ...
13/04/2026
Net Insight has been awarded a development project through the European Space Agency's Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP), with co-funding f...
13/04/2026
intoPIX will exhibit at NAB Show 2026, marking the company's 20th anniversary. The company will demonstrate its JPEG XS compression portfolio and IPMX-appro...
13/04/2026
Starting from scratch, the team built an in-house content platform comprising ga...
13/04/2026
Here's a look at some of the new products and updates, along with audio-centric conferences, that attendees will find next week at the show
When the 2026 N...
13/04/2026
Avid will launch new integrated newsroom capabilities for Avid for News at NAB Show 2026 (Booth N2226, April 18-22), demonstrating how Avid Content Core connect...
13/04/2026
Synamedia has announced a new version of Quortex PowerVu, an IP-native, software...
13/04/2026
Mediaproxy has developed a suite of AI-powered tools for brand and advertisement tracking, integrated into its LogServer compliance logging and analysis platfor...
13/04/2026
Disguise will demonstrate its media servers and software at NAB Show 2026, appearing across five partner booths in Central Hall: MRMC, B&H, Planar, CarbonBlack,...
13/04/2026
OpenDrives is introducing OpenDrives Edge at NAB Show 2026, a hybrid cloud-edge performance accelerator for distributed video and rich media workflows. The prod...
13/04/2026
The show will deploy 18 cameras across two sets and the draft floor, including a...
13/04/2026
Intuitive EQ plug-in gets an upgrade
Following its official launch back in February 2026, Musik Hack's intuitive EQ plug-in has been treated to its firs...
13/04/2026
Flagship soft synth collection expanded
The latest version of UVI's flagship vintage-inspired soft synth collection has just arrived, expanding the suit...
13/04/2026
Free version of innovative string library arrives
Released in October 2025, Lux Orchestral Strings was said to be Sonuscore's most ambitious library to ...
13/04/2026
The Girls' Research Camp is part of the Technology - Future in Bavaria edu...
13/04/2026
Rohde & Schwarz transforms submarine communications for real time underwater dom...
13/04/2026
Rohde & Schwarz enables Pulsar signal simulation to support next-generation navi...
13/04/2026
L3Harris is accelerating the development of infrared payloads for Space Development Agency's Tranche 2 Tracking Layer, to help meet urgent national defense ...
13/04/2026
By leveraging cutting-edge unfilmed Gen III image intensifier technology, NOVA delivers unmatched clarity, range, and reliability in low-light environments - en...
13/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/04/2026
Explore new Disguise plugins, including Sony's VP integration; Listen to panels across partner booths at Sony and B&H
Disguise, the company powering everyt...
13/04/2026
TAG Video Systems, the leading IP-native Realtime Media Platform, has announced its participation in the Media Exchange Layer (MXL) interop initiative. TAG has ...
13/04/2026
Today, Chaos launched V-Ray for Blender Community Edition at BCON Austin 2026, making its production-proven 3D renderer free for all Blender users. The same Aca...
13/04/2026
Additions strengthen LTN's leadership as broadcasters scale satellite-to-IP transition
LTN today announced the appointments of Mark Romano as Vice Presiden...
13/04/2026
LEEDS, UK, APRIL 13, 2026 NUGEN Audio releases Halo Vision v1.2, a significant update to its real time, customizable audio analysis suite for 3D, surround and...
13/04/2026
Atomos today announced the acquisition of Flanders Scientific (FSI), one of the most respected names in professional reference monitoring. This strategic move r...
13/04/2026
How Mei Semones Built Her Sound from J-Pop, Jazz, and Bilingual Songwriting The indie-pop artist combines agile guitar lines, rhythmic shifts, and lyrics that...
13/04/2026
Cue the Change: Jonathon Heyward Is Making Classical Music More Relatable Nicknamed the Converse Conductor, the Boston Conservatory alum holds top conductin...
13/04/2026
Heat Wave: Inside Miamis Sizzling, Boundary-Blurring Latin Music Scene In a city shaped by migration and exchange, Berklee alumni are helping drive a Latin mu...