The speech donation campaign was closed on 6.3.2024. A big thank you to all donors!
In 2020-2024, the Language Bank of Finland (Kielipankki) worked together with the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) and the former Finnish State Development Company (Vake Oy; later Ilmastorahasto Oy) in the Donate Speech campaign (Lahjoita puhetta). Experts from Aalto University and the University of Turku also participated in the project.
The ambitious goal was to gather 10000 hours of ordinary, casual Finnish speech that could be used for studying language as well as for developing technology and services that could be readily used in Finnish. Although the goal was not reached, the remarkable amount of more than 3000 hours of speech was gathered. The campaign was closed on 6th March 2024.
When planning the project, particular efforts were made in order to ensure that the material could be used under specific terms for both academic and commercial purposes. With the help of the donated speech material, both researchers and companies can learn to understand the properties of spoken Finnish and they can develop future applications and services that work conveniently in Finnish.
Speech was donated via the web browser (at the address lahjoitapuhetta.fi) or mobile app that offered a selection of tasks under fun themes that inspired and encouraged the participant to talk. The app was developed by Solita. All variants of spoken Finnish were welcomed, including the speech of second-language Finnish learners. As long as the participant spoke some Finnish and was able to understand the Finnish information and instructions in the app, they could donate.
The speech material donated during the campaign will be stored in the Language Bank of Finland (Kielipankki), coordinated by the University of Helsinki.
The speech material can be redistributed to individual researchers, universities and research organizations or private companies that need it for studying language or artificial intelligence, for developing AI solutions or for higher education purposes related to the aforementioned areas.
Read more about processing personal data in the Donate Speech campaign (in Finnish) and the privacy practices of the Language Bank of Finland.
Privacy notices published by users of resources in the Language Bank of Finland
NEW: The first datasets collected in the Donate Speech campaign are available in the Language Bank of Finland.
For academic researchers, the use of the data is free of charge, similarly to the rest of the services of the Language Bank of Finland. For commercial use, a fee will be charged in order to cover handling costs. All users must comply with the data protection terms and conditions of the resource.
You can find some examples of research topics in the Researcher of the Month archive of the Language Bank of Finland.
Privacy notices published by users of resources in the Language Bank of Finland
Please contact the email address lahjoita-puhetta (ATT) kielipankki.fi.
Last modified on 2024-10-22
