kserumaga/luganda-translator

# Luganda-English Translator A project to build a high-quality, open-source translation model for Luganda to English, designed to address the lack of reliable digital resources for the language. **Status:** 🚧 In Development / Proof-of-Concept Stage 🚧 ## The Problem Luganda is a vibrant language spoken by millions in Uganda. Despite its wide use, existing digital translation tools are often inaccurate, inconsistent, or of poor quality. This creates a barrier for communication, learning, and the development of digital tools for the Luganda-speaking community. ## Our Goal This project aims to create a reliable and nuanced machine translation model by fine-tuning a state-of-the-art, pre-trained multilingual model on a carefully curated parallel corpus. The ultimate goal is to provide a translation service that can be integrated into applications, including the one I am currently developing. ## 🧠 Tech & Approach This project will leverage modern tools for Natural Language Processing (NLP): * **Model:** Fine-tuning Meta AI's **NLLB (No Language Left Behind)** model, which is designed for low-resource languages. * **Framework:** **Hugging Face `transformers`** for model training and management. * **Language:** Python * **Training Environment:** **Google Colab** for free GPU access. * **Development Environment:** VS Code for local code editing and management. * **Version Control:** Git & GitHub. ## 📚 Data Sources The quality of our model depends entirely on the quality of our training data. The initial parallel corpus is being built from: * **Primary Source:** A full parallel text of the New King James (NKJ) Bible in both Luganda and English, aligned verse-by-verse. * **Future Sources:** We plan to expand the dataset with news articles, children's books, and crowdsourced translations to cover more conversational and modern language. ## 🚀 Getting Started & Workflow This project uses a hybrid local/cloud workflow to combine the benefits of a local IDE with cloud …