The Kiribati Translator Project
Kiribati is spoken by roughly 120,000 people and served by almost no translation tools. We are building one — and the people who speak the language are the ones building it.
What exists today
A working English–Kiribati translator is already live and free to use. It opens in a browser, installs to a phone like an app, and keeps working with no signal at all — which matters on Kiritimati and Tabuaeran, where connectivity is thin, slow and expensive.
It carries a phrasebook weighted toward medical and everyday language, a dictionary of more than 13,000 headwords, pronunciation guidance, and a grammar engine that builds sentences from the rules of the language rather than guessing at them.
Every entry started as a machine draft. I-Kiribati speakers are now going through them line by line — correcting what is wrong, adding what is missing, and recording how the words are actually said. Their corrections flow straight back into the tool, and anything a speaker has not yet checked is marked as unverified. This is honest work in progress, and it is meant to be seen that way.
Open the translatorWhere it is going
Speak, and be understood
The finished product is voice to text to voice. Say a sentence in English and hear it spoken in Kiribati; say it in Kiribati and hear it in English. Typing stays, but speech is the point — it is how a conversation actually happens.
A real app, fully offline
A free download for iPhone and Android with the language models held on the device, so it works in a village with no connection, on a boat, or in a clinic room with the power out.
Better every time someone uses it
Verified corrections and new voice recordings are pushed out to installed apps without anyone reinstalling anything. The tool improves because I-Kiribati speakers improve it, and the record of the language they build belongs to them.
Who it is for
English learners in Kiribati
Students and families who want English without giving up te taetae ni Kiribati. The speakers recording for this project asked for it so their own children could learn — that is where the request came from, and it is the first thing the tool has to do well.
Clinicians working in the islands
A visiting doctor, dentist or optometrist has days, not months. A patient history taken through guesswork is a worse history, and a treatment explained through guesswork is a worse treatment. The medical phrasebook exists for exactly this.
Everyone else doing the work
Teachers, ministry staff, local partners, volunteers and researchers — anyone whose work in Kiribati is slowed down by not sharing a language.
The language itself
Kiribati has almost no presence online and very little of it written down in a form a learner can use. Every verified word and every recording made for this project becomes a durable record of te taetae ni Kiribati — one that belongs to the people who speak it.
If you speak Kiribati, we need you
No amount of software can replace a native speaker. You can read through what has been drafted, correct what is wrong, add what is missing, and record your voice so learners hear the language spoken properly. It takes minutes, it costs nothing, and it is the part only you can do.
Review entries and record your voice