HYDERABAD: Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) be used to translate a book? Students of University of Hyderabad have proved that it can. They, along with a professor, have developed a Machine Translation (MT) system that has successfully translated a book written in Kannada to Telugu. Titled ‘Kshana Hottu Animittu’, a collection of 3000 short stories, the machine-translated book is now called ‘Kshana Kalam Animutyam’
The machine translation system, called SAARA, has been developed by Prof Kavi Narayana Murthy and his team at the School of Computer and Information Sciences University of Hyderabad. The translator is a product of decades of research and development work. The MT system provides quality translation system of translating texts with the help of computers.
The text was further critically edited by Dr Pammi Pavan Kumar, from Department of Telugu in UoH. The system is said to save time, effort and money, according to Prof Murthy, who said, “though it can translate one lakh sentences per second, about 30-40 minutes of human effort is required per page to ensure quality.”