NEW DELHI: Last Sunday, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the Kashi Tamil Sangamam event in Varanasi, a significant portion of his audience consisted of non-Hindi speakers. However, the Prime Minister did not face any difficulties, as his speech was being translated in real-time by an Indian-developed app called Bhashini.
Bhashini is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based language translation tool designed to facilitate real-time translation of Indian languages. Throughout his speech delivered in Hindi, the Prime Minister seamlessly communicated with the audience, as Bhashini efficiently translated his words into Tamil. Therefore, the Prime Minister didn’t hesitate to express that technology like Bhashini would make it easier for him to connect with the audience in regional language.
What is Bhashini?
Bhashini is an artificial intelligence (AI) language project under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). Launched in 2022 as part of the National Language Translation Mission (NLTM) by MeitY, its goal is to establish a National Public Digital Platform for languages and increase the amount of content available in Indian languages.
According to the government, Bhashini has developed a roadmap to enable an ecosystem that makes digital content more accessible to Indian citizens by offering it to them in their native language. Currently, the app can perform automatic speech recognition in 12 to 14 languages, text translation in 22 languages, and speech synthesis in 14 languages. This online platform also features a separate ‘Bhasadaan’ section, allowing individuals to contribute to multiple crowdsourcing initiatives, and it is accessible via Android and iOS apps.