IIT Bombay Launches Project Udaan, AI-Based Translation For Non-English Speakers

On the occasion of Hindi Diwas, IIT-Bombay launched “Project Udaan” on 14 September 2021. The program is able to finally see the light of day, after seven years of toil.

Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan envisaged this project from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in IIT Bombay. It was launched to break the language barrier that many students face while joining higher education institutes. 

Project Udaan enables the translation of textbooks and other study material of engineering and other streams from English to Hindi and other Indian languages. It is a donation-based and artificial intelligence-based translation ecosystem. It helps in translating engineering textbooks and learning materials in one-sixth the time as compared to manual tasking. This machine translation will be aided by human effort.

Every year, more than one crore students appear in CBSE, ICSE, and state board class 10th and 12th exams in India. Of these students, more than 65% study in non-English medium schools. Often, when joining higher education institutes where the primary language of instruction is English, such students face language barriers. 

Lack of textbooks and other educational resources in native languages add more to the issue for these students. Even when trying to understand the content from supplementary resources such as the internet or keeping up with contemporary research, they face a similar issue. Leaving behind such potential minds will retard the growth potential for the country. Project Udaan will play a significant role in accelerating the said growth and uplifting the overall potential of the nation’s young minds.