Paper short abstract:

Buddhism utilizes the Pali Canon, a spoken language unfamiliar to most Thai people, especially the younger generation. I researched a system to increase engagement within Buddhism utilizing the Google Speech-to-Text API and Python to transfer spoken Pali fragments into a full Thai transcription.

Paper long abstract:

There are more than 70 million people in Thailand and 95% are Buddhists. Buddhism does not require scheduled practice and Thai people do not study Pali. As a result, Pali, the spoken language of Buddhist scriptures, is unfamiliar to most. Thai people, especially the younger generation, do not understand the meaning of Pali chants because there are over 16,000 pages of chants and they are performed in random combinations, creating difficulty in following along during ceremonies. As digital humanities grows, technology helps reduce confusion and create simpler ways to practice religion.

My goal was to utilize the Google Speech-to-Text API with Python to transfer Pali chants into Thai text, helping Buddhists in Thailand increase engagement. I accomplished this by using code to build a program that could recognize a segment of the spoken Pali language, transcribe Pali into written Thai, and return back the full chant for my target audience (Thai Buddhists). I assembled chants for my dataset and utilized Python to incorporate the in-real-time aspect, which was especially important to the functionality of the program. I worked with the Google Cloud Console and programmed my code in PyCharm and in the terminal of my MacBook.

The results showed that the program recognized spoken Pali words in transcriptions and was able to map and generate the full chant in the Thai written language. Success depended on accurate transcription rates from the Google Speech-to-Text API, which resulted in over 95% accuracy.

For future research projects, utilizing this program to expand from Thailand to other Buddhist countries and their respective languages would help preserve the Pali Canon and keep Buddhism applicable to our daily lives. Especially for the younger generation, who are intertwined with technology, utilizing technology encourages a more sustainable modern approach to engaging with religion and accessing spiritual support.