Overview
Travancore Analytics developed a Malayalam Text-to-Speech (TTS) system using the F5-TTS architecture to address the lack of natural, accurate, and scalable TTS solutions in regional languages. Most available Malayalam TTS tools produce robotic voices and mispronunciations, limiting their adoption in business and accessibility contexts. By leveraging F5-TTS, expanding datasets, and fine-tuning performance, we created a system that delivers clear, human-like speech—helping businesses scale customer engagement, enable inclusivity, and reach millions of native Malayalam speakers.
Key Highlights:
- Identified gaps in existing Malayalam TTS systems (robotic voices, poor pronunciation, lack of scalability).
- Evaluated four TTS models and selected F5-TTS for its efficiency and adaptability.
- Collected and processed over 150 hours of Malayalam audio data to improve accuracy and naturalness.
- Overcame challenges of noisy datasets and misaligned transcriptions through manual review and cleaning tools.
- Trained and evaluated the system with robust benchmarks to ensure realistic and expressive voice output.
- Established a foundation for future enhancements, including prosody control for more human-like expression.
Case
A client approached Travancore Analytics with the need for a reliable Malayalam TTS system to power real-world applications such as customer support, e-learning platforms, and accessibility tools. Existing TTS systems lacked natural intonation and accurate pronunciation, often leading to poor user experience. We built a high-accuracy TTS model using F5-TTS, addressing both linguistic and technical challenges, and ensuring that businesses can offer inclusive and engaging digital interactions in Malayalam.
Challenges
Developing Malayalam TTS involved multiple hurdles:
- Data Scarcity: Lack of high-quality, paired Malayalam audio-text datasets.
- Noisy/Incorrect Transcriptions: Errors and inconsistencies degraded training quality.
- Audio Alignment Issues: Long or misaligned reference audio reduced speech naturalness.
- Complex Linguistics: Malayalam’s grammar and spacing inconsistencies affected pronunciation.
- Resource Constraints: Building an efficient yet scalable model within mid-range hardware limits.
Solution
We adopted a strategic approach to develop a scalable, high-performance Malayalam TTS solution:
After evaluating multiple models—including SpeechT5, Facebook MMS-TTS, and Kokoro TTS—we selected F5-TTS for its balance of efficiency, natural voice quality, and adaptability to low-resource languages. To address data challenges, we curated over 150 hours of Malayalam audio from real-world sources like interviews and podcasts, and applied rigorous cleaning, segmentation, and manual validation. The model was then trained and fine-tuned on this dataset using GPU-enabled infrastructure, ensuring scalability while maintaining naturalness.
Key Steps:
- Model Selection: Chose F5-TTS for its advanced architecture, zero-shot voice cloning, and resource efficiency.
- Data Expansion: Compiled 150+ hours of conversational Malayalam audio with accurate transcriptions.
- Data Cleaning & Review: Built custom tools for manual transcription validation to ensure dataset quality.
- Training & Fine-Tuning: Optimized training on a 12GB GPU setup with checkpointing for scalability.
- Evaluation: Used a benchmark dataset of 100 sample texts to measure expressiveness and clarity.
- Future Planning: Designed roadmap for integrating prosody features (intonation, rhythm, stress) for more lifelike voices.
Impact
The Malayalam TTS system built on F5-TTS has enabled businesses to bridge communication gaps with Malayalam-speaking users by delivering natural, human-like voice synthesis. This improves customer experience in contact centers, digital platforms, and accessibility tools, while also preserving the cultural richness of the language. By solving challenges around data quality and model scalability, Travancore Analytics has set a foundation for future-ready multilingual TTS systems that can extend to other low-resource languages—helping organizations expand market reach and deliver inclusive digital experiences.