The government is seriously considering putting more efforts on empowering a local alternative to Google’s language translation services. The platform called ‘Bhashini’ was announced this year and now the government recently included ‘Bhashini’ in its Digital India expansion plans that has a budget of Rs 14,903 crore.

Bhashini claims to be an ‘AI-enabled’ multi-language translation tool, currently supports 10 major Indian languages and with govt’s support, the platform will soon support all 22 official Indian languages. This project is part of the government’s broader National Language Translation Mission.

What will Bhashini do?

While the core focus is seamless language translation, the Bhashini platform aims to make the internet available to everyone in all the 22 Indian languages. Based on technologies like machine translation, automatic speech recognition, optical character recognition, text to speech and more, this platform mainly aims to help Indians get search results and browse the internet in whatever language they are comfortable with. In other words, knowing English will not be a barrier for Indians who are willing to access the internet.

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There’s no denying that online government services along with apps already provide the option to browse in major Indian languages but there’s still a huge gap that remains to be covered. English, somewhat, still continues to dominate as translation services to all Indian languages are not reliable yet. Another aspect is that Bhashini aims to offer translation services among different Indian languages as well– you can expect to get real-time translation from Hindi to Telugu or even Bengali to Manipuri.

The platform is trying to bring together stakeholders of state and central governments along with startups, tech companies, publishers, universities and even individuals. Currently, there’s a tool called Anuvaad that helps in both text and speech translation.

PM Narendra Modi recently introduced the Bhashini platform during the G20 Digital Economy Working Group Ministers Meet to showcase India’s capability as a test ground for tech innovation. The prime minister said, “We are building ‘Bhashini’, an AI powered language translation platform. It will support digital inclusion in all the diverse languages of India."

The government’s Digital India expansion plans, it is also looking at the modernisation of the National Knowledge Network (NKN) which connects 1,787 educational institutions. Also, it is focusing on the importance of cybersecurity by adding cyber-awareness courses for 12 crores college students among others.

Right now, Bhashini is looking at creating a “unifying architecture" to build a community of contributors that works with a “unified approach". While the platform will provide translation services, it will also allow individuals to submit local lingo data points to improve the service further.