README.md

---
language: ar
datasets:
- arabic_speech_corpus
- mozilla-foundation/common_voice_6_1
metrics:
- wer
tags:
- audio
- automatic-speech-recognition
- speech
- xlsr-fine-tuning-week
- hf-asr-leaderboard
license: apache-2.0
model-index:
- name: elgeish-wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53-arabic
  results:
  - task: 
      name: Automatic Speech Recognition
      type: automatic-speech-recognition
    dataset:
      name: Common Voice 6.1 (Arabic)
      type: mozilla-foundation/common_voice_6_1
      config: ar
      split: test
      args:
        language: ar
    metrics:
       - name: Test WER
         type: wer
         value: 26.55
       - name: Validation WER
         type: wer
         value: 23.39
---

# Wav2Vec2-Large-XLSR-53-Arabic

Fine-tuned [facebook/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53](https://huggingface.co/facebook/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53)
on Arabic using the `train` splits of [Common Voice](https://huggingface.co/datasets/common_voice)
and [Arabic Speech Corpus](https://huggingface.co/datasets/arabic_speech_corpus).
When using this model, make sure that your speech input is sampled at 16kHz.

## Usage

The model can be used directly (without a language model) as follows:

```python
import torch
import torchaudio
from datasets import load_dataset
from lang_trans.arabic import buckwalter
from transformers import Wav2Vec2ForCTC, Wav2Vec2Processor

dataset = load_dataset("common_voice", "ar", split="test[:10]")
resamplers = {  # all three sampling rates exist in test split
    48000: torchaudio.transforms.Resample(48000, 16000),
    44100: torchaudio.transforms.Resample(44100, 16000),
    32000: torchaudio.transforms.Resample(32000, 16000),
}

def prepare_example(example):
    speech, sampling_rate = torchaudio.load(example["path"])
    example["speech"] = resamplers[sampling_rate](speech).squeeze().numpy()
    return example

dataset = dataset.map(prepare_example)
processor = Wav2Vec2Processor.from_pretrained("elgeish/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53-arabic")
model = Wav2Vec2ForCTC.from_pretrained("elgeish/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53-arabic").eval()

def predict(batch):
    inputs = processor(batch["speech"], sampling_rate=16000, return_tensors="pt", padding=True)
    with torch.no_grad():
        predicted = torch.argmax(model(inputs.input_values).logits, dim=-1)
    predicted[predicted == -100] = processor.tokenizer.pad_token_id  # see fine-tuning script
    batch["predicted"] = processor.tokenizer.batch_decode(predicted)
    return batch

dataset = dataset.map(predict, batched=True, batch_size=1, remove_columns=["speech"])

for reference, predicted in zip(dataset["sentence"], dataset["predicted"]):
    print("reference:", reference)
    print("predicted:", buckwalter.untrans(predicted))
    print("--")
```

Here's the output:

```
reference: ألديك قلم ؟
predicted: هلديك قالر
--
reference: ليست هناك مسافة على هذه الأرض أبعد من يوم أمس.
predicted: ليست نالك مسافة على هذه الأرض أبعد من يوم أمس
--
reference: إنك تكبر المشكلة.
predicted: إنك تكبر المشكلة
--
reference: يرغب أن يلتقي بك.
predicted: يرغب أن يلتقي بك
--
reference: إنهم لا يعرفون لماذا حتى.
predicted: إنهم لا يعرفون لماذا حتى
--
reference: سيسعدني مساعدتك أي وقت تحب.
predicted: سيسئدني مساعد سكرأي وقت تحب
--
reference: أَحَبُّ نظريّة علمية إليّ هي أن حلقات زحل مكونة بالكامل من الأمتعة المفقودة.
predicted: أحب ناضريةً علمية إلي  هي أنحل قتزح المكونا بالكامل من الأمت عن المفقودة
--
reference: سأشتري له قلماً.
predicted: سأشتري له قلما
--
reference: أين المشكلة ؟
predicted: أين المشكل
--
reference: وَلِلَّهِ يَسْجُدُ مَا فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَمَا فِي الْأَرْضِ مِنْ دَابَّةٍ وَالْمَلَائِكَةُ وَهُمْ لَا يَسْتَكْبِرُونَ
predicted: ولله يسجد ما في السماوات وما في الأرض من دابة والملائكة وهم لا يستكبرون
--
```

## Evaluation

The model can be evaluated as follows on the Arabic test data of Common Voice:

```python
import jiwer
import torch
import torchaudio
from datasets import load_dataset
from lang_trans.arabic import buckwalter
from transformers import set_seed, Wav2Vec2ForCTC, Wav2Vec2Processor

set_seed(42)
test_split = load_dataset("common_voice", "ar", split="test")
resamplers = {  # all three sampling rates exist in test split
    48000: torchaudio.transforms.Resample(48000, 16000),
    44100: torchaudio.transforms.Resample(44100, 16000),
    32000: torchaudio.transforms.Resample(32000, 16000),
}

def prepare_example(example):
    speech, sampling_rate = torchaudio.load(example["path"])
    example["speech"] = resamplers[sampling_rate](speech).squeeze().numpy()
    return example

test_split = test_split.map(prepare_example)
processor = Wav2Vec2Processor.from_pretrained("elgeish/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53-arabic")
model = Wav2Vec2ForCTC.from_pretrained("elgeish/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53-arabic").to("cuda").eval()

def predict(batch):
    inputs = processor(batch["speech"], sampling_rate=16000, return_tensors="pt", padding=True)
    with torch.no_grad():
        predicted = torch.argmax(model(inputs.input_values.to("cuda")).logits, dim=-1)
    predicted[predicted == -100] = processor.tokenizer.pad_token_id  # see fine-tuning script
    batch["predicted"] = processor.batch_decode(predicted)
    return batch

test_split = test_split.map(predict, batched=True, batch_size=16, remove_columns=["speech"])
transformation = jiwer.Compose([
    # normalize some diacritics, remove punctuation, and replace Persian letters with Arabic ones
    jiwer.SubstituteRegexes({
        r'[auiFNKo\~_،؟»\?;:\-,\.؛«!"]': "", "\u06D6": "",
        r"[\|\{]": "A", "p": "h", "ک": "k", "ی": "y"}),
    # default transformation below
    jiwer.RemoveMultipleSpaces(),
    jiwer.Strip(),
    jiwer.SentencesToListOfWords(),
    jiwer.RemoveEmptyStrings(),
])
metrics = jiwer.compute_measures(
    truth=[buckwalter.trans(s) for s in test_split["sentence"]],  # Buckwalter transliteration
    hypothesis=test_split["predicted"],
    truth_transform=transformation,
    hypothesis_transform=transformation,
)
print(f"WER: {metrics['wer']:.2%}")
```

**Test Result**: 26.55%

## Training

For more details, see [Fine-Tuning with Arabic Speech Corpus](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/tree/1c06240e1b3477728129bb58e7b6c7734bb5074e/examples/research_projects/wav2vec2#fine-tuning-with-arabic-speech-corpus).

This model represents Arabic in a format called [Buckwalter transliteration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckwalter_transliteration).
The Buckwalter format only includes ASCII characters, some of which are non-alpha (e.g., `">"` maps to `"أ"`).
The [lang-trans](https://github.com/kariminf/lang-trans) package is used to convert (transliterate) Arabic abjad.

[This script](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/1c06240e1b3477728129bb58e7b6c7734bb5074e/examples/research_projects/wav2vec2/finetune_large_xlsr_53_arabic_speech_corpus.sh)
was used to first fine-tune [facebook/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53](https://huggingface.co/facebook/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53)
on the `train` split of the [Arabic Speech Corpus](https://huggingface.co/datasets/arabic_speech_corpus) dataset;
the `test` split was used for model selection; the resulting model at this point is saved as [elgeish/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53-levantine-arabic](https://huggingface.co/elgeish/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53-levantine-arabic).

Training was then resumed using the `train` split of the [Common Voice](https://huggingface.co/datasets/common_voice) dataset;
the `validation` split was used for model selection;
training was stopped to meet the deadline of [Fine-Tune-XLSR Week](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/700229f8a4003c4f71f29275e0874b5ba58cd39d/examples/research_projects/wav2vec2/FINE_TUNE_XLSR_WAV2VEC2.md):
this model is the checkpoint at 100k steps and a validation WER of **23.39%**.

<img src="https://huggingface.co/elgeish/wav2vec2-large-xlsr-53-arabic/raw/main/validation_wer.png" alt="Validation WER" width="100%" />

It's worth noting that validation WER is trending down, indicating the potential of further training (resuming the decaying learning rate at 7e-6).

## Future Work
One area to explore is using `attention_mask` in model input, which is recommended [here](https://huggingface.co/blog/fine-tune-xlsr-wav2vec2).
Also, exploring data augmentation using datasets used to train models listed [here](https://paperswithcode.com/sota/speech-recognition-on-common-voice-arabic).