Transcription · ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada Transcription Services
Verbatim and clean-read transcription of Indian-language audio by native speakers of the target variety, delivered against a written style guide with measured agreement. This page covers how that works specifically for Kannada, where north karnataka speech has markedly different intonation and lexicon from mysuru standard.
- Language
- Kannada (kn-IN)
- Dialects covered
- 5
- Typical programme
- 250-1,000 hours
- Cities
- Bengaluru, Mysuru, Hubballi-Dharwad
What changes when the language is Kannada
The service specification stays constant across languages; the linguistics do not. For Kannada, three things drive the design of a transcription programme.
- North Karnataka speech has markedly different intonation and lexicon from Mysuru standard
- Dialect spread: Bangalore urban, Mysuru (standard literary), Dharwad / North Karnataka, Mangaluru coastal
- Bengaluru is a migration city: Kannada speech there is mixed with English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Native-only Kannada cohorts recruited in Bengaluru are hard to fill without screening for years of residence.
Technical specification
| Parameter | Standard |
|---|---|
| Modes | Verbatim, clean verbatim, or clean-read |
| Timestamps | Utterance or word level |
| Script | Native script, romanised, or dual-script delivery |
| Tags | Speaker, noise, overlap, unintelligible, code-switch |
| Accuracy target | 99% on clean studio audio; agreed per-project on field audio |
Kannada cohort design
Screen Bengaluru participants for native fluency and years of Karnataka residence; otherwise the cohort drifts towards second-language Kannada.
| Dimension | Typical split | Why it matters for Kannada |
|---|---|---|
| Gender | 50 / 50 | Pitch range differences change acoustic model behaviour; unbalanced cohorts bias recognition |
| Age | 18-25: 30%, 26-40: 40%, 41-60: 30% | Older speakers retain conservative Kannada forms that younger urban speakers have lost |
| Region | Karnataka / parts of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and others | Dialect spread across 5 recognised varieties |
| Education | Mixed, including below-graduate | Prompt-reading fluency correlates with education and skews prosody |
| Condition | Studio / quiet room / field | Match the noise profile of your deployment |
Process
- Style guide authoring and client sign-off
- Transcriber calibration and agreement measurement
- First pass transcription
- Independent second-pass review
- Automated rule checks and delivery
Kannada-specific quality rules
- Northern lexical items replaced with standard equivalents
- Inconsistent transliteration of English technical terms
- Sandhi in connected speech transcribed as separate words by some annotators and joined by others
The style guide is the deliverable that determines whether your data is usable. It is written first and shipped with the data.
Deliverables
- Transcripts in your schema
- Style guide
- QA and agreement report
Worked example
A representative Kannada transcription engagement: 250 hours from 500 speakers, 50/50 gender, ages 18-45, spread across Bengaluru, Mysuru, Hubballi-Dharwad, recorded to the specification above and delivered in WAV with a per-utterance manifest.
Timeline: 1-2 weeks per 100 audio hours per language.
Where this data is missing today
Mysuru/Bengaluru standard dominates. North Karnataka (Dharwad, Kalaburagi) and coastal Mangaluru speech are barely represented in any public corpus.
Frequently asked
How much does Kannada transcription cost?
Priced per delivered hour or unit against a written spec. The cost drivers for Kannada are dialect spread, demographic narrowness and recording condition, in that order.
Which Kannada dialects are included?
By default Bangalore urban, Mysuru (standard literary), Dharwad / North Karnataka, Mangaluru coastal and others, tagged per speaker. You can also commission a single-dialect corpus if you are targeting one region.
Can you deliver Kannada data in our format?
Yes. Transcripts in your schema is the default, but naming, schema and directory structure follow your pipeline.
How long does a Kannada programme take?
1-2 weeks per 100 audio hours per language.
Request a Kannada transcription quote
Hours, speakers, dialects, deadline. Send what you have.