Get involved
Zirek builds screen-reader support and local neural text-to-speech for languages large vendors don’t get around to. Kurmanji is where it started, but every language is welcome, Kurdish or not. Most of the work needs native speakers, not programmers.
Contribute is the short version of this page, in Kurmanji and English.
How the project fits together
The add-ons run on the dengjen speech engine, which runs the voice models. Every project is listed under Projects on the home page, with links to its releases, source and issues, and to its docs where it has them. Architecture shows how the pieces connect.
Kurmanji phoneme support goes upstream to espeak-ng, so every project that uses it benefits.
Join the mailing lists
Two NVDA community lists on groups.io matter for this work. Both are public:
| List | Page | Subscribe by email | Unsubscribe by email |
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nvda-translations: translation questions and announcements. Translators need it. |
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nvda-addons: add-on development, and where each dengjen-nvda release is announced. |
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To subscribe on the web:
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Open the list’s page and select Join This Group. Sign in or create a free groups.io account when asked.
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Pick how you receive messages: individual emails, a daily digest, or the web only.
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Confirm your address from the email groups.io sends you. A moderator may need to approve your request.
To subscribe by email, send an empty message to the subscribe address and reply to the confirmation message.
Translate
The NVDA add-ons are translated in the NVDA community’s Crowdin project, the one every NVDA add-on uses. You need to read English, the source language, and write the language you translate into. No coding is involved.
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Create a Crowdin account.
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Subscribe to the NVDA Translations mailing list; see Join the mailing lists. Translation questions and announcements go there.
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Ask for access to the
nvdaandnvdaAddontranslation teams. -
Join the NVDA Add-ons Crowdin project.
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Choose your language, whichever it is. If it is not listed, ask for it on the mailing list.
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Translate the interface strings and the documentation.
New to Crowdin? Its guide for translators is at Crowdin for translators, and Online Editor explains how to translate strings in the browser.
NVDA maintains the full procedure in addonTranslators.md. Follow it if a step above has changed.
For a string that has no context or reads wrongly, open an issue on the dengjen-nvda repository with the exact text and what it should say.
Record your voice
Text-to-speech models for any language need voice recordings from native speakers. The voices are used by blind people with NVDA, often at two to three times normal speed, so every sound has to stay clear. Consistency matters more than expressiveness.
Anyone who speaks the language natively can volunteer. The full guide, with the recording terms, the recording script, equipment, reading style and how to hand in recordings, is Record your voice in the voice-models docs. Start there, then open an issue on the voice-models repository saying which language you speak.
Test
Windows testers are needed for dengjen-nvda, especially against current NVDA releases. Install the latest release, use it with your own NVDA setup, and report problems in the dengjen-nvda issues. Include your NVDA and Windows versions.
Write code
Each repository owns its code, build instructions and issues. Start from the repository’s README and its issue list.
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dengjen and dengjen-tashkeel. Rust core with Python, Java and other bindings. Fixes and binding work are welcome in both. Send Piper issues and pull requests to dengjen; dengjen-piper-rs is archived and takes none.
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dengjen-nvda and nvda-addon-testkit. Python, for NVDA add-on and test work.
Maintain
Every add-on and engine here has one maintainer, which is one too few. If you want to co-maintain a repository, open an issue there or contact the maintainer through the organization page.
Write documentation
This site starts from the repositories' READMEs. Tutorials, troubleshooting guides and architecture notes are all missing. The site’s build setup is described in its CONTRIBUTING.md.
Ground rules
Open an issue on the relevant repository before large changes. See the organization’s CONTRIBUTING.md for commit and pull-request conventions. You do not need to write code to help.
