Govt. launches Adi Vaani AI translator for tribal languages

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has launched the first-of-its-kind AI-based translation app for tribal languages, Adi Vaani. The app is in the beta version at present, supporting Santali from Odisha, Bhili from Madhya Pradesh, Mundari from Jharkand and Gondi from Chhattisgarh. The application was created by a group of institutions together with IIT Delhi, which includes IIIT Hyderabad, BITS Pilani, and IIIT Nava Raipur, with frequent interactions with the Tribal Research Institutes (TRIs) in Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, and Meghalaya. The researchers intend to include the Kui and Garo languages in the subsequent phase.

India has 461 tribal languages, of which 81 are vulnerable and 42 are in a critically endangered category, as reported in the 2011 census. These are low-resource languages, and don't have the huge digital text corpora on which to train AI models are simply not present. The researchers collaborated extensively with the people of the native language to make the models happen. The Adi Vaani app is an effort to leverage AI technologies in the digitisation, rejuvenation and conservation of tribal languages. 

Meanwhile, the technology allows tribal communities to receive education, governance and healthcare services in their own native language along with facilities like-text-to-text, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and speech-to-speech translations, and optical character recognition capabilities that facilitate fast digitisation.

Adi Vaani empowers tribal communities

One of the researchers behind Adi Vaani, Radhika Mamidi of IIITH states, "We will keep refining the models with more feedback received with the Beta launch. Our vision is to make NCERT books, health and education awareness videos, Government schemes and educational materials to be translated and available in these low resource languages using the rapidly emerging AI technologies. We will also be working on more native languages.". Under the guidance of Krupal Kasyap, as a part of Indic-Wiki summer internship programme, we concentrated on enriching Telangana origin language online content like Gondi, Koya, Kolami, Naikdi, Chenchu, Kaikadi (Yerukala), Lambadi, Nakkala, and Konda Kammara. We hope to develop AI tools for these languages too with the help of Telangana government and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.