Datasets:

MadLook
/

arabic-whisper-multidialect-processed-small

language:
  - ar
license: apache-2.0
task_categories:
  - automatic-speech-recognition
tags:
  - whisper
  - arabic
  - speech
  - asr
  - multidialect
pretty_name: Arabic Whisper Multi-Dialect (Processed) - Small
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K

Arabic Whisper Multi-Dialect - Processed (Small)

Dataset Description

This is a preprocessed version of the Arabic multi-dialect speech dataset, ready for fine-tuning OpenAI's Whisper models. The dataset contains audio features extracted and formatted specifically for Whisper training.

Size: 40% subset of the full arabic-whisper-multidialect dataset
Total Examples: 43,091 samples
Format: Pre-computed Whisper input features (mel spectrograms) and tokenized labels
Purpose: Direct use with Whisper training pipelines without additional preprocessing

Key Features

✅ Pre-processed - Audio already converted to Whisper input features
✅ Multi-dialect - Covers various Arabic dialects
✅ Training-ready - No additional feature extraction needed
✅ Memory-efficient - Optimized for faster loading during training

Dataset Structure

Data Splits

Split	Examples	Size (GB)
Train	37,835	33.8
Validation	2,628	2.35
Test	2,628	2.35
Total	43,091	38.5

Data Fields

input_features: Sequence[Sequence[float32]]
- Shape: (80, 3000) - 80 mel-frequency bins × 3000 time steps
- Pre-computed log-mel spectrogram features for Whisper
labels: Sequence[int64]
- Tokenized Arabic transcription using Whisper's tokenizer
- Special tokens: -100 for padding (ignored in loss computation)

Usage

Quick Start

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the dataset
dataset = load_dataset("MadLook/arabic-whisper-multidialect-processed-small")

print(dataset)
# DatasetDict({
#     train: Dataset with 37,835 examples
#     validation: Dataset with 2,628 examples
#     test: Dataset with 2,628 examples
# })

Loading a Single Split

# Load only training data
train_data = load_dataset("MadLook/arabic-whisper-multidialect-processed-small", split="train")

# Load with streaming for large datasets
train_stream = load_dataset("MadLook/arabic-whisper-multidialect-processed-small", split="train", streaming=True)

Preprocessing Details

This dataset was created from the original Arabic multi-dialect dataset using the following preprocessing pipeline:

Audio Loading: Resampled to 16kHz mono audio
Feature Extraction: Converted to 80-channel log-mel spectrograms using Whisper's feature extractor
Tokenization: Arabic text transcriptions tokenized with Whisper's multilingual tokenizer
Normalization: Applied Whisper's standard audio normalization
Subset Selection: Selected 40% of the original dataset

Processing Code

from transformers import WhisperProcessor

processor = WhisperProcessor.from_pretrained("openai/whisper-small", language="ar", task="transcribe")

def prepare_dataset(batch):
    # Load and resample audio
    audio = batch["audio"]
    
    # Compute input features
    batch["input_features"] = processor.feature_extractor(
        audio["array"], 
        sampling_rate=audio["sampling_rate"]
    ).input_features[0]
    
    # Tokenize transcription
    batch["labels"] = processor.tokenizer(batch["transcription"]).input_ids
    
    return batch

Source Dataset

This is a processed subset of the Arabic multi-dialect speech recognition dataset, which includes recordings from various Arabic-speaking regions and dialects.

Intended Use

Primary Use Cases

Fine-tuning Whisper models for Arabic speech recognition
Research on multi-dialect Arabic ASR
Benchmarking Arabic speech recognition systems
Transfer learning for low-resource Arabic dialects

Out-of-Scope Use

This dataset is already preprocessed - do not apply feature extraction again
Not suitable for training non-Whisper architectures without re-processing

Limitations

Only 40% of the full dataset (subset for faster experimentation)
Pre-computed features are specific to Whisper architecture
Fixed audio length (30 seconds max due to Whisper constraints)

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite both this preprocessed version and the original source dataset:

@dataset{arabic_whisper_multidialect_processed,
  title={Arabic Whisper Multi-Dialect - Processed (Small)},
  author={MadLook},
  year={2025},
  publisher={Hugging Face},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/MadLook/arabic-whisper-multidialect-processed-small}
}

License

Apache 2.0

Contact

For questions or issues with this dataset, please open an issue on the dataset repository.

Dataset Version: 1.0
Last Updated: 2025
Preprocessor: Whisper Feature Extractor (openai/whisper-small)
Compatible Models: openai/whisper-tiny, openai/whisper-base, openai/whisper-small, openai/whisper-medium, openai/whisper-large