---
language: kn
tags:
  - kannada
  - tokenizer
  - bpe
  - nlp
  - huggingface
license: mit
datasets:
  - Cognitive-Lab/Kannada-Instruct-dataset
pipeline_tag: text-generation
---

# Kannada Tokenizer

[![Hugging Face](https://img.shields.io/badge/HuggingFace-Model%20Card-orange)](https://huggingface.co/charanhu/kannada-tokenizer)

This is a Byte-Pair Encoding (BPE) tokenizer trained specifically for the Kannada language using the `translated_output` column from the [Cognitive-Lab/Kannada-Instruct-dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Cognitive-Lab/Kannada-Instruct-dataset). It is suitable for various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks involving Kannada text.

## Model Description

- **Model Type:** Byte-Pair Encoding (BPE) Tokenizer
- **Language:** Kannada (`kn`)
- **Vocabulary Size:** 32,000
- **Special Tokens:**
  - `[UNK]` (Unknown token)
  - `[PAD]` (Padding token)
  - `[CLS]` (Classifier token)
  - `[SEP]` (Separator token)
  - `[MASK]` (Masking token)
- **License:** MIT License
- **Dataset Used:** [Cognitive-Lab/Kannada-Instruct-dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Cognitive-Lab/Kannada-Instruct-dataset)
- **Algorithm:** Byte-Pair Encoding (BPE)

## Intended Use

This tokenizer is intended for NLP applications involving the Kannada language, such as:

- **Language Modeling**
- **Text Generation**
- **Text Classification**
- **Machine Translation**
- **Named Entity Recognition**
- **Question Answering**
- **Summarization**

## How to Use

You can load the tokenizer directly from the Hugging Face Hub:

```python
from transformers import PreTrainedTokenizerFast

tokenizer = PreTrainedTokenizerFast.from_pretrained("charanhu/kannada-tokenizer")

# Example usage
text = "ನೀವು ಹೇಗಿದ್ದೀರಿ?"
encoding = tokenizer.encode(text)
tokens = tokenizer.convert_ids_to_tokens(encoding)
decoded_text = tokenizer.decode(encoding)

print("Original Text:", text)
print("Tokens:", tokens)
print("Decoded Text:", decoded_text)
```

**Output:**

```
Original Text: ನೀವು ಹೇಗಿದ್ದೀರಿ?
Tokens: ['ನೀವು', 'ಹೇಗಿದ್ದೀರಿ', '?']
Decoded Text: ನೀವು ಹೇಗಿದ್ದೀರಿ?
```

## Training Data

The tokenizer was trained on the `translated_output` column from the [Cognitive-Lab/Kannada-Instruct-dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Cognitive-Lab/Kannada-Instruct-dataset). This dataset contains translated instructions and responses in Kannada, providing a rich corpus for effective tokenization.

- **Dataset Size:** The dataset includes a significant number of entries covering a wide range of topics and linguistic structures in Kannada.
- **Data Preprocessing:** Text normalization was applied using NFKC normalization to standardize characters.

## Training Procedure

- **Normalization:** NFKC normalization was used to handle canonical decomposition and compatibility decomposition, ensuring that characters are represented consistently.
- **Pre-tokenization:** The text was pre-tokenized using whitespace splitting.
- **Tokenizer Algorithm:** Byte-Pair Encoding (BPE) was chosen for its effectiveness in handling subword units, which is beneficial for languages with rich morphology like Kannada.
- **Vocabulary Size:** Set to 32,000 to balance between coverage and efficiency.
- **Special Tokens:** Included `[UNK]`, `[PAD]`, `[CLS]`, `[SEP]`, `[MASK]` to support various downstream tasks.
- **Training Library:** The tokenizer was built using the [Hugging Face Tokenizers](https://github.com/huggingface/tokenizers) library.

## Evaluation

The tokenizer was qualitatively evaluated on a set of Kannada sentences to ensure reasonable tokenization. However, quantitative evaluation metrics such as tokenization efficiency or perplexity were not computed.

## Limitations

- **Vocabulary Coverage:** While the tokenizer is trained on a diverse dataset, it may not include all possible words or phrases in Kannada, especially rare or domain-specific terms.
- **Biases:** The tokenizer inherits any biases present in the training data. Users should be cautious when applying it to sensitive or critical applications.
- **Out-of-Vocabulary Words:** Out-of-vocabulary words may be broken into subword tokens or mapped to the `[UNK]` token, which could affect performance in downstream tasks.

## Ethical Considerations

- **Data Privacy:** The dataset used is publicly available, and care was taken to ensure that no personal or sensitive information is included.
- **Bias Mitigation:** No specific bias mitigation techniques were applied. Users should be aware of potential biases in the tokenizer due to the training data.

## Recommendations

- **Fine-tuning:** For best results in specific applications, consider fine-tuning language models with this tokenizer on domain-specific data.
- **Evaluation:** Users should evaluate the tokenizer in their specific context to ensure it meets their requirements.

## Acknowledgments

- **Dataset:** Thanks to [Cognitive-Lab](https://huggingface.co/Cognitive-Lab) for providing the [Kannada-Instruct-dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Cognitive-Lab/Kannada-Instruct-dataset).
- **Libraries:**
  - [Hugging Face Tokenizers](https://github.com/huggingface/tokenizers)
  - [Hugging Face Transformers](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers)

## License

This tokenizer is released under the [MIT License](LICENSE).

## Citation

If you use this tokenizer in your research or applications, please consider citing it:

```bibtex
@misc{kannada_tokenizer_2023,
  title={Kannada Tokenizer},
  author={charanhu},
  year={2023},
  publisher={Hugging Face},
  howpublished={\url{https://huggingface.co/charanhu/kannada-tokenizer}},
}
```