IIT Madras students' videos will help you learn biology in 33 languages
CHENNAI: When a security guard asked Aniket Sevade what he was studying, he tried to explain complex concepts in Biology to him in a simple way — and this experience cemented the IIT-M student’s objective of bringing biology to the masses in a not-so-complex way.
In 2018, The Language Project was formed by IIT-M’s iGEM team. The group of Biological Engineering and Biological Sciences undergraduates released their first video, ‘Introduction to Synthetic Biology’, on YouTube. “There is biology in everything. We want to present the basics of biology in an unbiased way so that people can further read up on it. We want people to make informed decisions,” said BP Kailash, a fourth-year Biological Engineering student at IIT-M.
The team realised that those speaking vernacular languages were the most affected from the lack of information on such topics, and thus, they translated their first video into seven languages — Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi. “We saw the monopoly of the English language, and we didn’t want language to be a barrier for people to learn more about biology. I mean, we may be a little biased because we are ‘bio-enthu’ people,” said Mousami Shinde, another fourth-year Biological Engineering student. Now, their videos are translated into over 20 Indian languages and 13 foreign languages through collaboration with other iGEM teams.
Each video has a script written by one team member, which is then illustrated by their teammates Rohini Shetty, Sahana and Mugdha Mohkhedkar. This is then given a voice over. The students follow the NCERT syllabus and textbooks, as well as ask their professors for advice. The script is also read to a family member to see if it can be understood by a layman.
“In the beginning, we ran everything through Google Translate, even scientific terminology. But then, we got feedback from our viewers that they didn’t understand those terms because they just use the English word. So we fixed the video accordingly,” said Sarvesh Menon, a second-year Biological Science student. Through school visits and college open houses, there is a constant feedback loop for young students to learn from. The team has also collaborated with Cambrionics, a start-up, to have their videos displayed as educational tools for students.
The field of science communication, although strenuous, have the youth hooked. “I’ve learned through this project that you can’t get a feel of the audience if you stay away from them. You have to reach out to the crowd, understand their level, and start at that level before going forward,” said Mugdha.
The team hopes to expand The Language Project to explain concepts outside of just Biology and create a platform for students from IIT-M to build and contribute to the project.