Swahili & languages

Visitors can ask in English or Swahili and get an answer in the same language, from the same information.

How it works

• Search across languages. viora's default embedding model (bge-m3) places English and Swahili text about the same thing close together. A Swahili question finds an English passage, and the other way round.
• Reply language. viora detects whether the question is Swahili and tells the AI to reply in that language.
• Mixed language ("Ada ya boarding ni shilingi ngapi?", "naomba price list ya form five") works too. Detection looks at common words, Swahili verb forms (ni-na-penda, tu-ta-kuja) and spelling, so borrowed English nouns don't tip a Swahili question into English. For speech, viora combines this with what the speech model heard.
• Spoken answers. Swahili is spoken with natural Tanzanian or Kenyan voices, female or male. See Voices.

Writing your profile

You can write your profile in English, Swahili or both. For the best Swahili answers, include key terms in Swahili as well: product names, services and common phrases your customers use.

faqs:
  - q: Mnasafirisha bidhaa mikoani?
    a: Ndiyo, tunatuma kwa basi kwenda mikoa yote. Gharama inategemea mzigo.

Other languages

The models understand many languages, so French, Arabic or Kinyarwanda questions often work already. Official support for more East African languages is on our roadmap.