East Asian speech data: Taiwanese Mandarin, Japanese and Korean
Spontaneous two-person conversation in Taiwanese Mandarin, Japanese and Korean: 2,500 hours from 250 native speakers recorded in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, at $70 to $95 per hour of audio. The Mandarin dataset is Taiwanese Mandarin, recorded in Taiwan, not Mandarin from mainland China.
Compare the East Asian datasets
| Language | Recorded in | Hours | Speakers | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taiwanese Mandarin | Taiwan | 1,500 | 150 | $70 |
| Japanese | Japan | 500 | 50 | $95 |
| Korean | South Korea | 500 | 50 | $95 |
| All 3 | 3 countries | 2,500 | 250 | $70 to $95 |
List prices in US dollars per hour of audio. Need another language, more hours or your own recording setup? We collect speech data to spec.
What differs between these languages
Taiwanese Mandarin
Taiwanese Mandarin differs from mainland Mandarin in accent and vocabulary. Many speakers merge "zh", "ch" and "sh" into "z", "c" and "s", the neutral tone is used less, and it's written in Traditional characters.
Japanese
Japanese is written with three scripts and no spaces, so transcripts need clear rules for kanji, kana and word boundaries before accuracy can be measured.
Korean
Korean sounds change at word boundaries in ways the Hangul spelling doesn't show, and particles and endings attach to words, so word forms multiply.
What every dataset includes
| Speech | Spontaneous two-person conversations recorded in-country, not read scripts |
|---|---|
| Audio | Dual-channel, one channel per speaker |
| Transcripts | Time-aligned and human-verified |
| Metadata | Age, gender, region and recording device for every speaker |
| Consent | Every speaker signed explicit commercial-use consent; the full consent chain is provided for legal review |
| License | Commercial use, including training and evaluating ASR, TTS and other voice AI models |
| Price | $70 to $95 per hour of audio |
Built for
Training and evaluating speech models for Taiwan, Japan and South Korea:
- Automatic speech recognition (ASR / STT)
- Text-to-speech & voice synthesis prosody
- Voice agents and IVR
- Speaker diarization & turn-taking models
- Speech LLM / audio-understanding fine-tuning
Frequently asked questions
Is Taiwanese Mandarin speech data usable for a mainland China product?
Not on its own. The dataset is Taiwanese Mandarin recorded in Taiwan (1,500 hours), which differs from mainland Mandarin in accent and vocabulary. Taiwan writes Mandarin in Traditional characters and mainland China uses Simplified, but converting the script doesn't change the accent or word choice in the audio. A product for mainland users needs training and test audio from mainland speakers as well.
Can I license several East Asian languages together?
Yes. Each dataset is licensed at its own published price, with volume and multi-language discounts on request. All 3 share one format: dual-channel audio of spontaneous two-person conversation, time-aligned and human-verified transcripts, and the same speaker metadata, so they combine into one multilingual training set.
How much does East Asian speech data cost?
List prices are per hour of audio: $70 for Taiwanese Mandarin; $95 for Japanese and Korean. Each dataset page shows its price, and volume and multi-language discounts are available on request.
Can you record other East Asian languages?
Yes. Other languages, such as Cantonese or Mongolian, can be recorded to spec by native speakers, scripted or spontaneous, with time-aligned transcripts and documented consent. We confirm feasibility and send a quote within one business day.
Hear the languages before you buy
Tell us which languages you need and share your company email. We’ll email you representative audio, matching transcripts and the metadata schema, so you can check quality before you commit.