Towards Orthographically-Informed Evaluation of Speech Recognition Systems for Indian Languages

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Bhogale, Kaushal Santosh, Javed, Tahir, John, Greeshma Susan, Rathi, Dhruv, Padmanaban, Akshayasree, Parasa, Niharika, Khapra, Mitesh M.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Bhogale, Kaushal Santosh
Javed, Tahir
John, Greeshma Susan
Rathi, Dhruv
Padmanaban, Akshayasree
Parasa, Niharika
Khapra, Mitesh M.
author_facet Bhogale, Kaushal Santosh
Javed, Tahir
John, Greeshma Susan
Rathi, Dhruv
Padmanaban, Akshayasree
Parasa, Niharika
Khapra, Mitesh M.
contents Evaluating ASR systems for Indian languages is challenging due to spelling variations, suffix splitting flexibility, and non-standard spellings in code-mixed words. Traditional Word Error Rate (WER) often presents a bleaker picture of system performance than what human users perceive. Better aligning evaluation with real-world performance requires capturing permissible orthographic variations, which is extremely challenging for under-resourced Indian languages. Leveraging recent advances in LLMs, we propose a framework for creating benchmarks that capture permissible variations. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that OIWER, by accounting for orthographic variations, reduces pessimistic error rates (an average improvement of 6.3 points), narrows inflated model gaps (e.g., Gemini-Canary performance difference drops from 18.1 to 11.5 points), and aligns more closely with human perception than prior methods like WER-SN by 4.9 points.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_00941
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Orthographically-Informed Evaluation of Speech Recognition Systems for Indian Languages
Bhogale, Kaushal Santosh
Javed, Tahir
John, Greeshma Susan
Rathi, Dhruv
Padmanaban, Akshayasree
Parasa, Niharika
Khapra, Mitesh M.
Computation and Language
Sound
Evaluating ASR systems for Indian languages is challenging due to spelling variations, suffix splitting flexibility, and non-standard spellings in code-mixed words. Traditional Word Error Rate (WER) often presents a bleaker picture of system performance than what human users perceive. Better aligning evaluation with real-world performance requires capturing permissible orthographic variations, which is extremely challenging for under-resourced Indian languages. Leveraging recent advances in LLMs, we propose a framework for creating benchmarks that capture permissible variations. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that OIWER, by accounting for orthographic variations, reduces pessimistic error rates (an average improvement of 6.3 points), narrows inflated model gaps (e.g., Gemini-Canary performance difference drops from 18.1 to 11.5 points), and aligns more closely with human perception than prior methods like WER-SN by 4.9 points.
title Towards Orthographically-Informed Evaluation of Speech Recognition Systems for Indian Languages
topic Computation and Language
Sound
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.00941