Datasets:

mamakobe
/

luhya-multilingual-dataset

language:
  - en
  - sw
  - luy
multilinguality:
  - multilingual
task_categories:
  - translation
task_ids:
  - translation
tags:
  - luhya
  - african-languages
  - low-resource
  - multilingual-translation
  - kenya
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K
source_datasets:
  - original
license: cc-by-4.0

Luhya Multilingual Translation Dataset

Dataset Description

This dataset contains 26,205 translation pairs for Luhya dialects, English, and Swahili. It was created to support machine translation research for Luhya, a Bantu language family spoken in Kenya.

Languages and Dialects

Languages:

Luhya Dialects:

Bukusu
Luwanga
Marachi
Maragoli
Tsotso

Dataset Statistics

Split	Examples
Train	20,963
Validation	2,621
Test	2,621
Total	26,205

Data Sources

Bible
Dictionary
Proverbs
Translations

Dataset Structure

Data Fields

source_text: Source text for translation
target_text: Target translation (includes dialect tokens)
source_lang: Source language code
target_lang: Target language code
dialect: Specific Luhya dialect (if applicable)
domain: Source domain (bible, dictionary, proverbs, etc.)

Example

{
  "source_text": "Hello, how are you?",
  "target_text": "<luy_bukusu> Murachi mulahi?",
  "source_lang": "en",
  "target_lang": "luy", 
  "dialect": "Bukusu",
  "domain": "greetings"
}

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("mamakobe/luhya-multilingual-dataset")

# Access splits
train_data = dataset['train']
val_data = dataset['validation'] 
test_data = dataset['test']

Ethical Considerations

Community Involvement

Dataset created in collaboration with Luhya language communities
Sources include traditional texts and community contributions
Respects cultural and linguistic heritage

Intended Use

Machine translation research
Language preservation efforts
Educational applications
Cultural documentation

Limitations

May not represent all Luhya dialects equally
Translation quality varies by domain
Some entries may contain cultural context not captured in direct translation

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite:

@dataset{luhya_multilingual_2024,
  title={Luhya Multilingual Translation Dataset},
  author={mamakobe},
  year={2024},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/mamakobe/luhya-multilingual-dataset}
}

License

This dataset is released under CC-BY-4.0 license. Please respect the cultural heritage of the Luhya communities when using this data.

Dataset created: 2025-08-30