This model is the result of converting the BSC-LT/whisper-3cat-balearic into a lighter model using a Python module called faster-whisper. The model can be used for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) in Catalan, especially in the Balearic accent. The model intends to transcribe Catalan audio files to plain text without punctuation.

Installation

To use this model, you may install faster-whisper

Create a virtual environment:

python -m venv /path/to/venv

Activate the environment:

source /path/to/venv/bin/activate

Install the modules:

pip install faster-whisper

For Inference

To transcribe audio in Catalan using this model, you can follow this example:

python

from faster_whisper import WhisperModel

model_size = "BSC-LT/faster-whisper-3cat-balearic"

# Run on GPU with FP16
model = WhisperModel(model_size, device="cuda", compute_type="float16")

# or run on GPU with INT8
#model = WhisperModel(model_size, device="cuda", compute_type="int8_float16")
# or run on CPU with INT8
# model = WhisperModel(model_size, device="cpu", compute_type="int8")

segments, info = model.transcribe("audio_in_catalan.mp3", beam_size=5, task="transcribe",language="ca")

print("Detected language '%s' with probability %f" % (info.language, info.language_probability))

for segment in segments:
    print("[%.2fs -> %.2fs] %s" % (segment.start, segment.end, segment.text))

Conversion Details

Conversion procedure

This model is not a direct result of training. It is a conversion of a Whisper model using faster-whisper. The procedure to create the model is as follows:

bash

ct2-transformers-converter --model BSC-LT/whisper-3cat-balearic
   --output_dir faster-whisper-3cat-balearic
   --copy_files preprocessor_config.json 
   --quantization float16

Citation

If this model contributes to your research, please cite the work:

bibtext

@misc{BSC2025-fasterwhisper3catbalearic,
      title={Recognition models for adaptation to Catalan variants}, 
      author={Hernandez Mena, Carlos Daniel; Messaoudi, Abir; Armentaro, Carme; España i Bonet, Cristina;},
      organization={Barcelona Supercomputing Center},
      url={https://huggingface.co/BSC-LT/faster-whisper-3cat-balearic},
      year={2025}
}

Additional Information

Author

The conversion process was performed during June (2025) in the Language Technologies Laboratory of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.

Contact

For further information, please email langtech@bsc.es.

Copyright

License

Apache-2.0

Funding

This work is funded by the Ministerio para la Transformación Digital y de la Función Pública - Funded by EU – NextGenerationEU within the framework of the project ILENIA with reference 2022/TL22/00215337.

The conversion of the model was possible thanks to the computing time provided by Barcelona Supercomputing Center through MareNostrum 5.

We acknowledge EuroHPC Joint Undertaking for awarding us access to MareNostrum5 as BSC, Spain.

BSC-LT/faster-whisper-3cat-balearic

faster-whisper-3cat-balearic

Table of Contents

Model Description

Intended Uses and Limitations