Plightin/Lulimi

Lulimi (Nyanja for "tongue" or "language") is a pioneering Neural Machine Translation (NMT) engine designed to bridge communication gaps between Zambia's four primary local languages—Nyanja (NY), Bemba (BM), Tonga (TO), and Lozi (LO)—and English (EN). Lulimi: The Zambian Language Engine. Lulimi (Nyanja for "tongue" or "language") is a pioneering Neural Machine Translation (NMT) engine designed to bridge communication gaps between Zambia's four primary local languages—Nyanja (NY), Bemba (BM), Tonga (TO), and Lozi (LO)—and English (EN). 🎯 Project Goal To deliver high-quality, real-time machine translation that empowers digital inclusion, governance, and economic growth across Zambia. ⚙️ Architecture: The Pivot Strategy Due to the low-resource nature of the Zambian languages, the Lulimi engine employs a Pivot Strategy using English as the central intermediary language. Translation Route Model Calls Example (Bemba $\to$ Lozi) Direct (Zambian $\leftrightarrow$ English) 1 Model Call BM_to_EN or EN_to_BM Pivot (Zambian $\leftrightarrow$ Zambian) 2 Model Calls BM_to_EN then EN_to_LO 🚀 Repository Structure The repository is organized to separate the community data collection, the core API, and the documentation. /Lulimi/ ├── /backend/ # Python API and NMT models (Phase 2) │ ├── api.py # FastAPI/Flask server and routing logic │ ├── models/ # Trained NMT model files (large files managed via Git LFS) │ └── requirements.txt # Python dependencies (TensorFlow/PyTorch, FastAPI) │ ├── /frontend/ # Community Contribution Platform (CCP) UI │ └── lulimi_ccp_interface.html # The main CCP HTML/JS file │ ├── /docs/ # Project planning and phase documentation │ ├── lulimi_api_structure.md # API specification │ ├── lulimi_language_engine_proposal.md │ └── lulimi_phase1_data.md # Data Strategy │ ├── README.md # This file └── .gitignore # Standard exclusion list for development 🛠️ Getting Started (Phase 1: Data Collection) Currently, the most active component is the Commu …