KEMT: Benchmarking AI Translation Across Five Kenyan Languages

Description and use

<p><em>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/kaggle-2026-09-23">Kaggle Benchmarking Challenge</a>.</em></p> <p>This would probably needs its own research paper to explain everything, but here's a shorter version? 😅</p> <p>It started with the conversations about pacing the frontier. I was reading posts from the people building these models, talking about how far AI had come and what needed to happen next. Meanwhile, I was thinking about the languages we speak here in Kenya.</p> <p>If these systems are already at the frontier, where does that leave Kalenjin?</p> <p>Or

Problem

<p><em>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/kaggle-2026-09-23">Kaggle Benchmarking Challenge</a>.</em></p> <p>This would probably needs its own research paper to explain everything, but here's a shorter version? 😅</p> <p>It started with the conversations about pacing the frontier. I was reading posts from the people building these models, talking about how far AI had come and what needed to happen next. Meanwhile, I was thinking about the languages we speak here in Kenya.</p> <p>If these systems are already at the frontier, where does that leave Kalenjin?</p> <p>Or

Outcome

<p><em>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/kaggle-2026-09-23">Kaggle Benchmarking Challenge</a>.</em></p> <p>This would probably needs its own research paper to explain everything, but here's a shorter version? 😅</p> <p>It started with the conversations about pacing the frontier. I was reading posts from the people building these models, talking about how far AI had come and what needed to happen next. Meanwhile, I was thinking about the languages we speak here in Kenya.</p> <p>If these systems are already at the frontier, where does that leave Kalenjin?</p> <p>Or

Evidence

KEMT: Benchmarking AI Translation Across Five Kenyan Languages

Source