Speech to text - adding support for another language

[mikkpaasuke]

Hi all!

I'm trying to add support for speech to text with a .NET Maui app. It actually works pretty well for English, but I'm needing to add support for languages that are NOT listed as 'available locales' on my (or the client's) devices. Within the VS2022 emulator, it lists all locales, and S2T works well with the desired languages (Estonian, Russian, Ukrainian). However, we seem to have hit an obstacle regarding the available language on the phone; even if I, for example, install the 'Estonian' language pack (enabling my phone GUI to operate in Estonian), it doesn't add Estonian/Estonian language as a 'locale', and therefore the S2T drops back to trying to interpret Estonian as English.

Is there any way around this, either using some code enhancements, or by installing software/configuring our devices? It seems a bit odd to me that for an online facility (we haven't tried the offline variation), that it should be restrained in this way.

I've tried searching through .NET MAUI, Xamarin, and general Android developer information, so far with no result.

Thanks if anyone can give some assistance here. Otherwise it looks like it's necessary to use (for example) OpenAI plus recording audio.

Mikk

[VladislavAntonyuk]

Hi, try set the culture like uk_UA instead of uk-UA.

[mikkpaasuke]

Thanks, Vladislav - I did take note of the issue with, I believe, offline usage, where this is offered as a possible solution. My comment above was for online usage, but now I've experimented with both variants (offline and online), and nothing I do (in terms of combinations of 'uk_UA', 'uk-UA', for Ukrainian for example, works. With the offline variants, I am prompted to download either the US English or Australian English language pack, even for non-English languages. So right now I'm not having much success. I guess it's about time to come with with a minimal example and submit an issue. Note - English always works (however, I am using an Australian-bought phone), so it's not surprising. We really need to get the three languages I listed above working, though.