Acts2
Acts2 is a service that leverages the latest advances in Artificial Intelligence to provide state-of-the-art translation and text-to-speech into a wide range of languages. While SIL’s Serval and Scripture Forge focus on machine translation for Biblical text, Acts2 builds upon these tools and extends their capabilities to work with materials related to education, development, trauma healing, anti-trafficking and more.
The inspiration for ‘Acts2’ comes from the description of Pentecost found in that chapter of the Bible where we see God’s heart for connecting with people in their own language. The last several years have seen tremendous advances in machine translation capabilities for high resource languages, however, the same level of progress has not yet been seen for lower resource languages. This has largely been due to lower levels of data availability and less economic demand for translation into languages with fewer speakers. With Acts2, we are able to make use of SIL’s extensive multilingual parallel data from Scripture translations and other sources. We use these data to fine-tune machine translation models that achieve better results in low resource languages, helping to bridge the gap faced by these traditionally underserved language communities.
Using Acts2
Acts2 is now available through a UI and also via API. We have trial user accounts available upon request which allow users to try out different translation models and run their own text-to-speech.
Users can select from models available in around 200 languages, with hundreds more available upon request. While some models are only available for non-profit use due to their licensing terms, the majority of languages covered by Acts2 do have at least one model available which is licensed for commercial use. New models can also be fine-tuned upon request where permissively licensed parallel corpora are available.
As a professional service, Acts2 aims to make the translation process easy and painless. We have expanded the range of upload and download options accepted by Acts2, and now support SFM and docx (experimental) file types, in addition to CSVs, text files, and an option for pasting in text directly. We've also made it possible for text-to-speech to be used directly on uploaded text, rather than only on translated text.
Reviewing results
As with the best machine translation available today, results from Acts2 still require human review. As an optional feature, this review, along with editing and rating of translations from different models, can be completed directly within the Acts2 UI. This makes it easier to manage translation projects while also providing feedback which can be incorporated into model improvements.
Pricing
We aim to provide affordable and competitive pricing for Acts2 services. Two price tiers are available for translation, allowing for flexibility according to budget and project needs. The Professional tier offers the greatest support, covering hundreds of languages, several translation model options, and rapidly developing experimental features including translation suggestions, HTML tag preservation, and a glossary feature. It starts at 0.2 cents per word for the first 1 million words, and is half that much after 1 million words. The Basic tier is an ultra low cost alternative, providing only translation in up to 60 languages starting at 0.028 cents per word and also dropping to half price after 1 million words.
Text-to-speech pricing ranges from $0.14/minute to $1.14/minute depending upon the language. While this service is available in over 1,000 languages, quality is known to vary considerably across this range. We are actively in the process of training new text-to-speech models to provide higher quality and an even broader range of languages. A complete price sheet by language for translation and text-to-speech can be found here: Acts2 Pricing Sheet
For more information on Acts2, including how you can sign up for a trial account, fill out our contact form at ai.sil.org/contact.