The Daily Scot

£600,000 project to record 500 hours of spoken Gaelic for AI tools

The AITEAL platform will record, transcribe and translate Gaelic speakers in the Western Isles and Skye, building data for speech-to-text software, chatbots and subtitling.

By The Daily Scot Staff ·

Bilingual Gaelic and English signage in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis.
Bilingual Gaelic and English signage in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. · Photograph: Colin Smith (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A new digital project to record and transcribe spoken Gaelic has been awarded £600,000 through the Scottish Government's CivTech innovation programme.

AITEAL – Gaelic for "ray of light" – will record up to 500 hours of Gaelic speech in the Western Isles and Skye over the next 18 months, then transcribe and translate it.

The project is being delivered by Gaelic arts organisation Fèisean nan Gàidheal, working with the charity Community Enterprise and technology partner Northcode Digital. It will create four jobs, including three fieldworker posts and a project manager.

Building blocks for Gaelic technology

The recordings are intended to provide the data needed to build Gaelic speech-to-text software, AI chatbots, educational resources, and automated transcription and subtitling.

Education, Culture and Gaelic Secretary Màiri McAllan said a shortage of Scottish Gaelic data had been a major obstacle to developing technology for Gaelic speakers, and that AITEAL aimed to remove it and help the language and culture flourish.