Santali Speech to Text — Dictate in Santali with Veena

Santali is spoken by about 8 million people across Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, and Assam, which makes it one of the most widely spoken tribal languages of India. It has its own alphabet, Ol Chiki, developed in the early twentieth century, and a living tradition of stories, songs, and proverbs passed down by word of mouth. Yet when it comes to speech to text, Santali is usually invisible: mainstream cloud transcription services support a handful of major languages and simply leave the rest out. Veena takes a different path. Santali speech to text runs entirely on your own device — free, offline, and without an account.

Santali speech to text with Veena

Veena’s multilingual engine covers all 22 scheduled languages of India, and Santali is one of them. The recognition engine is built on IndicConformer, a multilingual model from AI4Bharat, with a dedicated vocabulary and decoding configuration for Santali. That means when you speak Santali, Veena transcribes it as Santali, with its own words and sounds, rather than pushing your speech toward a neighboring language.

The result appears in the Ol Chiki script, ready to edit, copy, or share. So if you want to send a message, write a list, or draft a document in Santali without typing the script character by character, you can simply speak and let Veena do the rest. A traditional greeting like ᱡᱚᱦᱟᱨ (johar) comes back as text in the same script you would write it in.

Why transcribe Santali audio

Santali has an oral tradition that is rich but fragile. Recording and transcribing speech is one practical way to keep it alive in a digital age:

• Documenting stories and songs. Elders’ tales, folk songs, and proverbs can be recorded and turned into written text that younger speakers can read and share.
• Preparing study material. Santali is taught in schools across the tribal belt, and teachers can turn spoken lessons and notes into Ol Chiki text for worksheets and handouts.
• Official records. Santali appears in government correspondence, panchayat records, and community meetings; dictation makes it faster to produce written Santali.
• Everyday use. Notes, shopping lists, reminders, and messages in Santali are easier to produce by speaking, especially if you read Ol Chiki but are not quick at typing it.

For a language that cloud speech-to-text services ignore, having a working Santali transcription tool is a real step forward.

How to use Veena for Santali

Open Veena, tap the microphone, and start speaking Santali. The app records 16 kHz mono audio and transcribes it locally with the bundled model, then shows the transcript in an editable text box.

• On the mobile app (Android and iOS), use hold-to-record for short bursts or tap-to-record for longer dictation, then copy the transcript or share it.
• On the desktop app (Windows, macOS, and Linux), use the push-to-talk shortcut and the text is pasted directly into the app you are using, or copied to your clipboard.
• You can replay the last recording to check what was said, and every transcript can be edited before you copy it.

No internet connection is needed for transcription, and no account is required. Your audio never leaves your device.

Tips for better accuracy in Santali

The Santali vocabulary in Veena is tuned for the language as it is spoken today, and a few habits make the transcript cleaner:

• Speak Santali naturally. Avoid switching to Hindi or Bengali in the middle of a sentence; a consistent language gives the model the clearest signal.
• Give the sounds their due. Santali contrasts aspirated and unaspirated consonants, and sounds like the retroflex ṭ and ḍ, so pronounce words the way you would in careful conversation rather than running them together.
• Keep background noise low. A quiet room matters more than a fancy microphone; the model works best when your voice is the clearest thing it hears.
• Use the right recording mode. Hold-to-record for a short command, tap-to-record for a full paragraph, and keep the phone about a hand’s distance from your mouth.
• Edit before you copy. The transcript box is fully editable, so fix any slip before you paste the text into an email, document, or message.

Start dictating in Santali today

Santali speakers have waited long enough for speech-to-text support. With Veena, you get free, offline, on-device transcription in the Ol Chiki script, on both mobile and desktop. If you also work in Bengali or Odia, Veena covers those languages too — see Bengali speech to text and Odia speech to text, or browse the full list of supported languages to see what else is available. For practical tips on dictating in Indian languages, visit the Veena blog.