README.md

---
license: other
language:
- shn
pretty_name: RFA Shan Language Voices
tags:
- audio
- asr
- speech-recognition
- shan
- tai-yai
- webdataset
- myanmar
task_categories:
- automatic-speech-recognition
- audio-classification
- voice-activity-detection
language_creators:
  - found
source_datasets:
  - original
---

# RFA Shan Language Voices

This dataset contains **20.58 hours** of audio in the **Shan (Tai-Yai)** language, sourced from news broadcasts by **Radio Free Asia (RFA) Burmese**. This is one of the largest publicly accessible audio resources for the Shan language, designed to support research in low-resource automatic speech recognition (ASR), voice activity detection, and other speech-related tasks.

The audio has been automatically segmented into **5,047** manageable chunks and prepared in the efficient [WebDataset](https://github.com/webdataset/webdataset) format. It includes rich metadata extracted from the original YouTube videos, but **does not contain transcriptions**, making it ideal for self-supervised pre-training or tasks that do not require text.

### Acknowledgments

This dataset was made possible by the journalists and broadcasters at **Radio Free Asia (RFA)** who produce and publish high-quality content in the languages of Myanmar.

## Dataset Structure & Format

This dataset follows the [WebDataset](https://github.com/webdataset/webdataset) format. Each sample consists of two paired files inside a `.tar.gz` archive:

- `XXXX.mp3` — the audio chunk (up to 15 seconds)
- `XXXX.json` — the corresponding metadata (UTF-8 JSON)

Each `.json` file contains a rich set of fields preserved from the original YouTube video:

```json
{
  "__key__": "_3fZIzO939U_chunk_0000",
  "file_name": "_3fZIzO939U_chunk_0000.mp3",
  "title": "ရှမ်းတိုင်းရင်းသားဘာသာ အစီအစဉ်",
  "uploader": "RFA လွတ်လပ်တဲ့အာရှအသံ",
  "channel_url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE75dgnEYPacknHHg3a3sJg",
  "upload_date": "20221014",
  "duration": 15.0,
  "video_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3fZIzO939U",
  "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi_webp/_3fZIzO939U/maxresdefault.webp",
  "description": "ရှမ်းတိုင်းရင်းသားဘာသာ အစီအစဉ်\n~~~\n■ နိုင်ငံရေး စစ်ရေးပြဿနာတွေနဲ့ ပတ်သက်ပြီး RCSS/SSA  ကြေညာချက် ထုတ်ပြန်\n\n■ ကျိုက်ထီးရိုးဘုရား ကင်မွန်းစခန်းက စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်မ ၄၄ တပ်စခန်း ပစ်ခတ်ခံရ\n\n■  မိုင်းတင်အုပ်စုက စစ်ဘေးရှောင်တွေ နေရပ်ပြန်ကြဖို့ ခက်ခဲနေ\n____________\nSubscribe ▶ http://bit.ly/2ajgBxf\n\nမိုဘိုင်းအက်ပ် ▶ https://smarturl.it/RFAburmeseapp\nဝဘ်ဆိုက် ▶ https://www.rfa.org\nဖေ့စ်ဘွတ်ခ် ▶ https://www.facebook.com/rfaburmese\nတွစ်တာ ▶ https://twitter.com/RFABurmese\n\n(လွတ်လပ်တဲ့အာရှအသံရဲ့ တာဝန်နဲ့ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ဟာ သက်ဆိုင်ရာအစိုးရတွေရဲ့ ပိတ်ပင်ဟန့်တားမှုတွေကြောင့် သတင်းလွတ်လပ်ခွင့်မရှိတဲ့ အာရှနိုင်ငံတွေအတွက် တိကျမှန်ကန်တဲ့ သတင်းအချက်အလက်တွေ ထုတ်လွှင့်ပေးဖို့ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။)",
  "tags": [
    "Radio Free Asia",
    "Burma",
    "Myanmar",
    "Burmese",
    "RFA",
    "news"
  ],
  "view_count": 1085,
  "like_count": 14,
  "language": "shn",
  "original_video_id": "_3fZIzO939U"
}
```
## Usage Example

You can easily stream this dataset using the Hugging Face `datasets` library. The `streaming=True` mode is highly recommended.

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset(
    "freococo/rfa_shan_language_voices",
    split="train",
    streaming=True
)

for sample in dataset.take(5):
    print(sample["audio"])          # Audio object with decoded waveform
    print(sample["json"]["title"])  # Access metadata from the JSON
    print(f"Duration: {sample['json']['duration']}s")
```

## Known Limitations

This dataset was created using an automated pipeline and has the following characteristics:

- **No Transcriptions:** This dataset is audio-only and does not include text transcriptions.
- **Background Noise:** As the audio is sourced from news broadcasts, some segments may contain background music, jingles, or other non-speech sounds.
- **No Speaker Labels:** The dataset does not differentiate between different speakers within or across broadcasts.

Despite these limitations, this resource is invaluable for pre-training models like Wav2Vec2, developing voice activity detection systems, or performing other unsupervised speech research for the Shan language.

## Licensing & Use

This dataset contains audio content derived from the official YouTube channel of **Radio Free Asia (RFA) Burmese**. All original content is the exclusive property of RFA and is protected by copyright.

The use of this dataset is governed by the official [RFA Terms of Use](https://www.rfa.org/about/termsofuse).

In summary, the content is made available for **non-commercial, informational, and educational purposes only**.

- **Permitted Use**: You may use this dataset for non-commercial research, personal projects, and educational applications.
- **Prohibited Use**: Any commercial use, including but not limited to training proprietary AI models for commercial products, is not permitted without explicit written permission from RFA.
- **Required Attribution**: When using or referencing this dataset, you must provide clear attribution to **Radio Free Asia (RFA)** as the original source of the content.

By using this dataset, you agree to abide by these terms.

## 📚 Citation

If you use this dataset in your work, please cite it as follows:
```
> **Freococo (2025).**  
> *RFA Shan Language Voices*  
> [https://huggingface.co/datasets/freococo/rfa_shan_language_voices](https://huggingface.co/datasets/freococo/rfa_shan_language_voices)  
> Dataset compiled from Radio Free Asia (RFA) Burmese news broadcasts.
```