Kuwala / Oasis: local translation checks
13 October 2026

What is available

Oasis can translate completed English answers and the readable English text
of a current PDF page. Translation is requested by the reader. It runs
locally on the Raspberry Pi using Meta's NLLB-200 distilled 600M model,
converted to an 8-bit CTranslate2 version. Jetson answering is separate.
The translation runtime needs no cloud service or internet connection.

A read-only status check on 13 October confirmed Chichewa / Nyanja, French,
Swahili and Zulu, plus Tumbuka, Bemba, Portuguese and Shona as commissioned,
clearly labelled trials. The additional four carry speaker-review-pending
status. All eight remain machine translation; language availability does
not establish accurate meaning or suitability for technical instructions.

The English answer, original PDF, source references and physical page
identity remain available. PDF-page translation uses the complete extracted
English text of that page, within request limits of 12,000 characters and
48,000 UTF-8 bytes. It does not translate page images, diagrams or layout.
An image-only scan has no readable text to translate. Explicitly non-English
pages are not eligible; a page without language metadata has no confirmed
source language. Model-selected original quotations remain unchanged.

What real checks showed

On 13 October, an isolated Pi assessment ran 24 real translation requests:
eight languages, each with a learning answer, a farming answer and an
original-PDF excerpt. All passed the mechanical reference and quantity
contracts, including partial results that retained exact English. The
learning and PDF-excerpt cases translated completely for all eight targets.
Seven farming cases retained one or more English fragments. This is not
24 linguistic-quality passes or 24 fully translated answers.

One French seed-drying output reduced a temperature range of 35-40 degrees C
to 35 degrees C, both initially and on recovery. The guard rejected that
sentence's translation and retained the whole English sentence. This is
an example of a detected translation error, not general seed-drying advice.

Meaning errors also survived those checks: a French learning translation
rendered "pressed specimens" as printed samples while preserving numerical
details and references. These software checks cannot prove that conditions,
negation, terminology or regional wording retain their original meaning.

Separate public visitor checks completed a Tumbuka answer translation and
a Portuguese translation of a full TESSA PDF page. Originals, source links
and page identity remained available, with trial and pending-review notices.
The Portuguese attribution wording appeared imprecise during inspection
and needs speaker review. These checks establish runtime operation and
source preservation, not human acceptance of translation quality.

What comes next

Fluent speakers need to review complete examples, particularly technical
terms, qualifications, negation and regional wording. Local trials should
then check whether translated material helps people understand and discuss
the sources. Original documents remain essential throughout that process.

Sources and full method

Commissioned languages, real model assessment and public checks:
https://github.com/shoshin-labs/kuwala-station/blob/e44fa5548729cb8421b006f7bb5f99615d58fd48/docs/OASIS_TRANSLATION_LANGUAGES.md

Shared web/Android reader and public runtime verification:
https://github.com/shoshin-labs/kuwala-station/blob/e44fa5548729cb8421b006f7bb5f99615d58fd48/docs/OASIS_WISHLIST_M15_TEST_REPORT.md

Pi translation architecture and preservation checks:
https://github.com/shoshin-labs/kuwala-station/blob/e44fa5548729cb8421b006f7bb5f99615d58fd48/docs/PI_TRANSLATION_SERVICE.md