Swahili speech-to-text API (Kiswahili)

Transcribe Swahili with one request

Set language to sw and start a job. Poll GET /transcribe/{jobId} for the result, or pass a webhook_url.

curl https://app.kolwrite.com/transcribe \
  -H "x-api-key: $KOLWRITE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"audio_url": "https://example.com/mahojiano-sw.m4a", "model": "oracle", "language": "sw", "include_diarization": true, "output_format": "json"}'

Translate Swahili audio into English in the same job (Oracle models only):

curl https://app.kolwrite.com/transcribe \
  -H "x-api-key: $KOLWRITE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"audio_url": "https://example.com/mahojiano-sw.m4a", "model": "oracle_mini", "language": "sw", "translate_to": "en", "output_format": "srt"}'

Swahili at a glance

What to know about Swahili transcription

• One code, sw, covers Swahili in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and beyond. Coastal and inland accents differ; test your region.
• Urban Kenyan speech mixes Swahili and English (Sheng). Send sw when Swahili dominates and review slang.
• Swahili has less public training audio than major world languages. Test a sample before large jobs.

Where teams use Swahili transcription

• Radio and community media in East Africa.
• NGO, health-program and research interviews translated with translate_to: "en".
• Customer calls for East African companies.

Choosing a model

Start with oracle (US$1.44 per hour) for production Swahili audio. Use base (US$0.48) for clean, single-speaker recordings at volume, oracle_mini (US$0.96) for the cheapest translation, and oracle_pro or oracle_max for noisy or difficult audio. KolWrite does not publish a Swahili accuracy figure for this API, so test a sample of your own recordings before committing. Full comparison: models and prices.

Questions and answers