Dataset · ur-IN · Scripted Speech
Buy a Urdu scripted speech dataset
Speakers read prompts from a phonetically balanced script shown one line at a time, with retakes on any flubbed or misread line. Available for Urdu as a licensed build against your specification, with audio, verbatim transcripts, speaker metadata and consent records.
- Language
- Urdu (Perso-Arabic (Nastaliq))
- Type
- Scripted Speech
- Per speaker
- 20–30 minutes of accepted audio per speaker
- Accepted yield
- 85–90% of recorded time is accepted
How Urdu scripted speech is recorded
Speakers read prompts from a phonetically balanced script shown one line at a time, with retakes on any flubbed or misread line.
A 45-minute booth session yields roughly 300–400 prompts. One file per utterance, cut at the prompt boundary, so alignment is exact before any forced-alignment pass runs.
85–90% of recorded time is accepted. Prompt-level retakes catch problems inside the session, so very little is discarded afterwards. This is the highest-yield style we run.
What is in the package
- 16-bit PCM WAV audio, captured at 48 kHz / 24-bit and delivered at your target rate
- Verbatim Perso-Arabic (Nastaliq) transcripts with utterance-level timestamps
- Prompt ID mapped to every utterance
- Verbatim deviation flags where the speaker departed from the script
- Per-utterance SNR and duration in the manifest
- Per-speaker metadata: age band, gender, region, dialect, education band, device
- Consent records mapped to speaker IDs and retained for audit
- Speaker-disjoint train / dev / test splits
Specification
| Field | Standard value |
|---|---|
| Language | Urdu (ur-IN) |
| Speech type | Scripted Speech |
| Per speaker | 20–30 minutes of accepted audio per speaker |
| File granularity | One WAV per prompt, named by prompt ID and speaker ID |
| Prompt coverage | Triphone-balanced script with digit, date, name and domain-lexicon blocks |
| Leading/trailing silence | 200 ms padded, verified automatically on every file |
| Alignment | Prompt text is ground truth; deviations are flagged rather than silently corrected |
| Dialects covered | Dakhini (Hyderabad), Lucknawi, Dehlvi, Bihari Urdu |
| Recording cities | Hyderabad, Lucknow, Delhi, Bhopal |
| Transcription | Native verbatim, second-pass reviewed |
Quality gates applied to scripted speech
The failure modes this style is prone to: reading voice: flat prosody and unnatural stress that trains a model on speech nobody actually produces
- Prompt-to-audio match verified by a native reviewer; a misread line is a rejected file, not an edited transcript
- Hyperarticulation flagged — a speaker over-enunciating because they are reading produces audio that does not match deployment
- Clipping and truncation checked at both utterance boundaries
- Per-speaker prompt coverage confirmed, so no speaker silently skips a block
Pricing and volumes
| Volume | Indicative range | Delivery |
|---|---|---|
| 50 hours (pilot-scale) | ₹2,10,000 – ₹4,10,000 | 3-4 weeks |
| 250 hours | ₹9,97,500 – ₹19,47,500 | 5-8 weeks |
| 1,000 hours | ₹35,70,000 – ₹69,70,000 | 10-16 weeks |
Bands, not a price list. A signed specification converts them into one fixed figure, and staged delivery lets you start training before the full corpus lands.
Why generic Urdu corpora underperform
Indian Urdu specifically, and Dakhini in particular, are absent from public data dominated by Pakistani Urdu broadcast speech.
Spoken Urdu and spoken Hindi are largely mutually intelligible; the distinction is mainly lexical and orthographic. Decide up front whether transcription is in Nastaliq, Devanagari, or both.
- Right-to-left Nastaliq tooling errors and diacritic loss
- Merged phonemes transcribed by sound rather than by etymology, or vice versa, inconsistently
- Dakhini forms replaced with standard Urdu
Licensing and compliance
- Perpetual, transferable licence covering model training, derivative models and commercial deployment
- Written informed consent from every speaker, retained and auditable
- Compliant with India's DPDP Act 2023 handling requirements and mapped to GDPR obligations for EU buyers
- No scraped, resold or re-licensed third-party audio in any delivery
How buying works
- Send your specification or use the standard one above
- Receive a fixed scope, price and delivery schedule within one working day
- Optional paid pilot of 10-20 hours against the same spec
- Recruitment and recording begin on signature, with staged batches
- Acceptance testing per batch, then final delivery with the full manifest
Frequently asked
Can I buy an off-the-shelf Urdu scripted speech dataset today?
We build to specification rather than reselling a fixed corpus, because off-the-shelf Urdu audio almost never matches a real deployment's dialect mix and noise profile. A 50-hour build ships in three to four weeks.
What licence do we get?
A perpetual, transferable licence with full IP transfer on delivery. You can train, distribute and commercialise models built on the data without further payment.
Can we get a free sample?
Yes — a short sample reflecting the agreed specification is provided before the pilot is signed, so you can check transcript quality and audio characteristics.
Which Urdu dialects are included?
By default Dakhini (Hyderabad), Lucknawi, Dehlvi and others, with quotas set at recruitment. You can weight the mix to match where your product is deployed.
Related pages
Quote this Urdu dataset
Tell us the volume and dialect mix for Urdu scripted speech and you get a fixed price and delivery date.