Benchmarking Akan ASR Models Across Domain-Specific Datasets: A Comparative Evaluation of Performance, Scalability, and Adaptability

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Auteurs principaux: Mensah, Mark Atta, Wiafe, Isaac, Ekpezu, Akon, Appati, Justice Kwame, Abdulai, Jamal-Deen, Wiafe-Akenten, Akosua Nyarkoa, Yeboah, Frank Ernest, Odame, Gifty
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Mensah, Mark Atta
Wiafe, Isaac
Ekpezu, Akon
Appati, Justice Kwame
Abdulai, Jamal-Deen
Wiafe-Akenten, Akosua Nyarkoa
Yeboah, Frank Ernest
Odame, Gifty
author_facet Mensah, Mark Atta
Wiafe, Isaac
Ekpezu, Akon
Appati, Justice Kwame
Abdulai, Jamal-Deen
Wiafe-Akenten, Akosua Nyarkoa
Yeboah, Frank Ernest
Odame, Gifty
contents Most existing automatic speech recognition (ASR) research evaluate models using in-domain datasets. However, they seldom evaluate how they generalize across diverse speech contexts. This study addresses this gap by benchmarking seven Akan ASR models built on transformer architectures, such as Whisper and Wav2Vec2, using four Akan speech corpora to determine their performance. These datasets encompass various domains, including culturally relevant image descriptions, informal conversations, biblical scripture readings, and spontaneous financial dialogues. A comparison of the word error rate and character error rate highlighted domain dependency, with models performing optimally only within their training domains while showing marked accuracy degradation in mismatched scenarios. This study also identified distinct error behaviors between the Whisper and Wav2Vec2 architectures. Whereas fine-tuned Whisper Akan models led to more fluent but potentially misleading transcription errors, Wav2Vec2 produced more obvious yet less interpretable outputs when encountering unfamiliar inputs. This trade-off between readability and transparency in ASR errors should be considered when selecting architectures for low-resource language (LRL) applications. These findings highlight the need for targeted domain adaptation techniques, adaptive routing strategies, and multilingual training frameworks for Akan and other LRLs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_02407
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Benchmarking Akan ASR Models Across Domain-Specific Datasets: A Comparative Evaluation of Performance, Scalability, and Adaptability
Mensah, Mark Atta
Wiafe, Isaac
Ekpezu, Akon
Appati, Justice Kwame
Abdulai, Jamal-Deen
Wiafe-Akenten, Akosua Nyarkoa
Yeboah, Frank Ernest
Odame, Gifty
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Sound
Audio and Speech Processing
Most existing automatic speech recognition (ASR) research evaluate models using in-domain datasets. However, they seldom evaluate how they generalize across diverse speech contexts. This study addresses this gap by benchmarking seven Akan ASR models built on transformer architectures, such as Whisper and Wav2Vec2, using four Akan speech corpora to determine their performance. These datasets encompass various domains, including culturally relevant image descriptions, informal conversations, biblical scripture readings, and spontaneous financial dialogues. A comparison of the word error rate and character error rate highlighted domain dependency, with models performing optimally only within their training domains while showing marked accuracy degradation in mismatched scenarios. This study also identified distinct error behaviors between the Whisper and Wav2Vec2 architectures. Whereas fine-tuned Whisper Akan models led to more fluent but potentially misleading transcription errors, Wav2Vec2 produced more obvious yet less interpretable outputs when encountering unfamiliar inputs. This trade-off between readability and transparency in ASR errors should be considered when selecting architectures for low-resource language (LRL) applications. These findings highlight the need for targeted domain adaptation techniques, adaptive routing strategies, and multilingual training frameworks for Akan and other LRLs.
title Benchmarking Akan ASR Models Across Domain-Specific Datasets: A Comparative Evaluation of Performance, Scalability, and Adaptability
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Sound
Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02407