Jump to content

Commons:Lingua Libre

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

Welcome !

[edit]

A major reorganization of LinguaLibre.org occurred on May 20th: the entire codebase has been replaced.

Our official documentation has moved to Help:Lingua Libre, while our community portal is now hosted at Commons:Lingua Libre for all wiki-based interactions, information, resources, tutorials, and editable local wordlists. This page currently host recent announcement but will soon be revamped into a portal page pointing to the most relevant resources.

Moving forward, LinguaLibre.org will serve as a static branding website and the host for our recording studio application at LinguaLibre.org/app/. Help:Lingua_Libre and Commons:Lingua_Libre/About can be edited directly on Commons, their contents is then imported into Lingualibre.org's Help and About menus.

You are highly encouraged to explore the project's pages and edits them when needed ! :)

Announcement (1): new recording Studio pre-release !

[edit]
Try out the pre-release: https://lingua-libre.toolforge.org (testing ground).
Found a bug? Please report it here: Commons talk:Lingua Libre#Reporting bugs.

Context

[edit]

Over the past decade, Lingua Libre has helped 315 linguistic communities around the world record their voices — over 1.4 million recordings so far! –, and to share those records through Wikimedia projects.

But as our project grew, the old tool became too hard to maintain and improve. It was time for a big revamp.

For the last two years, a team of volunteers and freelancers — supported by Wikimedia France, the French Ministry of Culture’s Department for French Languages (fr:DGLFLF), and others — have been working hard on a brand-new version of Lingua Libre, nicknamed Lingua Libre Django.

This new version is built on a modern, easier-to-maintain stack (VueJS, Django, and MariaDB). This stack allows us to fix, add, and expand faster. We also took the opportunity to refresh the design and improve mobile support. All open source on Wikimedia France's Gitlab.

The New Recording Studio: Lingua Libre Django

[edit]
Please check the latest release announcement: Commons:Lingua Libre/Django/Release. — The Lingua Libre Team / Yug

Thanks

[edit]

The work is still ongoing, but we want to give a big thank-you to everyone who’s been part of this journey — especially User:Poslovitch, User:Pushkar7077, User:Yug, Aditya, and SaltyKheera — for tackling hundreds of technical challenges and building up the new codebase from ground up !

We’re also very grateful for the support and funding from Wikimedia France, the French Ministry of Culture’s Department for French Languages (DGLFLF), the French Ministry of Higher Education (through a Wikiresidence in Toulouse), the Google Summer of Code 2024, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Stay tuned — more updates and good news are coming soon! 🎉

— The Lingua Libre Team / Yug


Announcement (2): update !

[edit]

Hello All, 👋

Here is our second progress update on the Lingua Libre migration, with two main points to share.

📌 Recording Studio Migration

[edit]

First, the migration of the Lingua Libre recording studio is progressing, but at a slower pace than initially planned.

This delay is due to:

  • the testing phase gathering too little feedback so far, which led us to extend it in order to ensure better coverage and stability;
  • a scheduling mismatch between Michael (WMFR) and User:Yug, which made it difficult to identify a suitable migration window in December.

We consider this extra time as an opportunity to strengthen the process and ensure a smoother transition for everyone.

🗂️ Wikipages migration has started!

[edit]
LinguaLibre.org wikipages migration .

Good news: the migration of Lingua Libre wikipages has officially begun.

Existing Lingua Libre wiki pages will progressively be phased out and replaced with redirects pointing to their new pages on Wikimedia Commons. Corresponding announcements are being sent.

🧳Migration steps include

[edit]

Once migrated, pages on Lingualibre.org will be automatically masked.

Current status

[edit]
  1. ✅ User:* 19 (import)
  2. ✅ Template:* 101 [69 and 35]
  3. ✅ Lingualibre:* 349
  4. ✅ Help:* 228
  5. ✅ Category:* 29
  6. ✅ List:* 1,587 (imports)
  7. Translations:
    1. ✅ roots (~26)
    2. ✅ subpages/micro-translations (~5,619)

Next

[edit]

This process is being carried out carefully and unveiled unexpected bottlenecks for Translations pages, with Wikimedia Commons server access. It therefore may take up to 2~4 weeks. While we aim to import clean data — and, where possible, enhanced content including automated fixes to links and page titles—, community review will still be essential.

Your help will be very welcome to check, improve, and refresh the migrated pages.

— The Lingua Libre Team / Yug


Announcement (3): Wikimedia Commons is now our primary wiki !

[edit]

Hello everyone, 👋

We finished the wikipages migration : Wikimedia Commons is now Lingua Libre’s primary wiki!

After two weeks of intensive work, the migration of our documentation and project pages is largely complete. To ensure a smooth transition, most pages on Lingualibre.org are now automatically masked and redirect to Wikimedia Commons.

🌍 Preserving Language Diversity

[edit]

Being true believers in language diversity, we have made a sustained effort to migrate and preserve all translations previously contributed by the community. Over the last few days, we have also polished Commons root pages, search features and navigation templates to ensure everything is functional.

🗂️ New Project Structure

[edit]

The Lingua Libre project on Commons is now organized as follows:

├── Help:Lingua Libre (subpages) – Our primary help and documentation hub.
├── Commons:Lingua Libre (subpages) – The main project landing page.
|    └── Commons:Lingua Libre/List (subpages) – Home for vocabulary lists, organized by ISO 639-3 code, Wikidata QID, or English name.
├── Category:Lingua Libre – The root category for project assets (visuals, presentations, event photos, etc.).
|    └── Category:Lingua Libre pronunciation – The core category for all audio recordings.
└── {{Lingua Libre help}} & {{Lingua Libre technical}} – Navigation templates used to link the project across Commons and other wikis.

🛠️ Ongoing Adjustments

[edit]

While the bulk of the migration is successful, moving a wiki of this size inevitably means some elements may need fine-tuning. You may encounter:

  • Broken wikilinks, template calls, CSS or translations.
  • Outdated content that requires refreshing or deletion.

🤝 How you can help

[edit]

The project is now in our hands! We invite you to explore the new setup and help us "clean up" where needed. Whether it’s fixing a link, updating a translation, or suggesting a deletion for obsolete content, your contributions will help to making our new home on Commons better.

Thank you for your patience during this transition.

— The Lingua Libre Team / Yug


Announcement (4): Expanded support for 2300+ languistic communities !

[edit]
Look for your languages' on Commons:Lingua Libre/List.

To better support the onboarding of smaller linguistic communities, Lingua Libre has achieved a major milestone in its integration with Wikimedia Commons. We are proud to announce that the project now provides vocabulary content for ~2,342 linguistic communities through a massive expansion of our list ecosystem.

🚀 What’s New?

[edit]
  • Massive List Expansion: We have deployed over 6,000 lists to help volunteers find words to record. This includes:
    • 1,600 community-generated lists successfully migrated
    • 1,900 Unilex lists reimported from the Unilex project
    • 2,400 Swadesh110 and Swadesh207 lists imported from Panlex.org
  • Better Categorization: All lists are now actively managed by Dragons Bot and tagged with {{Lingua Libre list}}. This allows for precise filtering by language, quality, and content type.
  • New Navigation: Explore our new central hub for finding words: Lingua Libre/List.

🌍 Impact

[edit]

By integrating these resources, we have opened the doors for 2,342 language communities (view full category here) to audio-document their linguistic heritage with better tools and structured data.

Thank you to all the contributors and developers who helped build this linguistic bridge! -- Yug (talk) 10:03, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]


Announcement (5) : Planned release !

[edit]

2026 LINGUA LIBRE UPGRADE

On May 18th-20th, LinguaLibre.org successfully got twin major upgrades, for its .org and its app. These upgrades facilitate under-resourced languages and smaller linguistic communities on-boarding, assets and data maintenance. It also simplifies code maintenance, reduces costs, and will allow faster reaction time. Thank you for your patience!

The New Recording Studio: Lingua Libre Django

[edit]

We’ve rebuilt nearly all the old features — and added some great new ones!

2025 Lingua Libre Django-Step 1 Profiles-en


  • NEW! Point your participants to Lingualibre.org in their language ! To reduce language barrier, add ?uselang={languageCode} to your links. Participants will then on the website or app in their known language. Example, share https://lingualibre.org/?uselang=id with Indonesian minorities participants.


  • NEW! Step 1: Pick among 10,000+ languages & dialects ! We expanded support from 700 to 10,000+ languages so you may now work on rare languages as soon as you login.


  • NEW! Step 4: Expanded support for 2,342 languages ! Onboarding is made easier, pick from our 6,000 « local lists » in 2,343 languages. Looking for the most common words in your languages ? Search for Swadesh110, Swadesh207 and Unilex lists.


  • NEW! Step 4: Share your list! After loading a list and curating it, you can now share its link to other contributors. Your friends can jump straight in — no setup needed.


  • NEW! Step 6: Play all recordings! Listen to all your recordings in one go and uncheck the ones you’re not happy with.


At step 4, share your list button is now available. This feature eases on-boarding of new contributors.
  • NEW! Step 6: Instant Structured Data support! This helps your recordings to get reused automatically across Wikimedia projects and beyond.


  • NEW! App-wide: Keyboard accessible! You can now navigate using the keyboard alone — making Lingua Libre easier to use for everyone.


Facilitating maintenance

[edit]
  • NEW! Lingua Libre accessible in more languages ! More than 50% of world's languages implies endangered communities and older speakers who may require Lingua Libre their languages. This new Lingua Libre is accessible in 20+ major languages, while you may add missing translations via the [Edit] button.
Some translations are missing ? Click on the pen button and start translating, then message us. We publish new translations on demand.
Some app translations are missing ? Same, click on the pen button and start translating.


  • NEW! Wikimedia Commons is now the Single source of truth ! No more data duplication between Lingua Libre.org and Wikimedia Commons. All data are now stored on Commons: in the filename, its wikitext and its structured data.


RoR.js in action : rename files and edit wikitext of your records, including additional categories.



  • NEW! A new developer-friendly Django / Vuejs stack ! Your community can jump in and add that sweet feature you need.


Now that the codebase is simpler and cleaner, we can move faster — fixing bugs, adding new features, and finding even more ways to highlight your recordings. These updates will roll out in future development cycles.

Coming soon

[edit]


  • COMING! Step 4: Sentences recording with Tatoeba.org partnership ! We are partnering with Tatoeba.org community and developers to provides curated example sentences in over 400 languages.


  • COMING! Rapid Dictionaries: build basic bilingual e-dictionaries within hours ! You can now append translations to your lists, therefore create and demoing bilingual e-dictionaries to your community within a few hours of work, see details on Commons:Lingua Libre/Dictionary.
    The smallest communities regularly requested « a simple process to create bilingual vocabulary list with audio ». We listen, rolled up our sleeves, and we are now testing an integrated « Rapid Dictionary » system.

See also

[edit]