Building Collaborative Speech Corpora for Low-Resource Languages: The Galician Dataset in Mozilla Common Voice

Adina Ioana Vladu, Elisa Fernández Rei, María Pérez Lago


Abstract
This paper presents the methodology and outcomes of building collaborative speech corpora in Mozilla Common Voice (MCV), focusing on the Galician case within Proxecto Nós. We describe the organization of voice collection campaigns –on-site events, student participation, Validatón marathons, and corporate collaboration– and analyze the results in MCV v22.0. While the dataset has achieved a modest scale, major gaps remain in metadata completeness and dialectal tagging, with implications for ASR performance. Drawing on our experience, we highlight effective strategies for engagement, such as transparent communication, cultural identification, and user-friendly tools. We conclude with lessons learnt for improving data representativeness, participant retention, and ethical governance. The observations are specific to the Galician case study but may inform similar efforts in other lesser-resourced languages.
Anthology ID:
2026.lrec-1.135
Volume:
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Editors:
Stelios Piperidis, Núria Bel, Henk van den Heuvel, Nancy Ide, Simon Krek, Antonio Toral
Venue:
LREC
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA Language Resource Association
Note:
Pages:
1710–1720
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-main-135
DOI:
10.63317/4gd79cq3cump
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Adina Ioana Vladu, Elisa Fernández Rei, and María Pérez Lago. 2026. Building Collaborative Speech Corpora for Low-Resource Languages: The Galician Dataset in Mozilla Common Voice. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, pages 1710–1720, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. ELRA Language Resource Association.
Cite (Informal):
Building Collaborative Speech Corpora for Low-Resource Languages: The Galician Dataset in Mozilla Common Voice (Vladu et al., LREC 2026)
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