Build real-time speech translation to reduce language barriers: Govt to cos

The government is looking at providing content on internet to people in their mother tongue, a senior official said on Monday and urged companies to solve language-related problems in India.

He also said the Centre is looking for technical solution to remove language barrier in conversation among Indians.

"We need a method through which any Indian using his or her language should be able to converse with any user in any other Indian language without impediment of English as a link language. This is the kind of goal we have set," Information Technology Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney said at a FICCI event on language technology.

He said that both global and local companies should strive to real-time speech-to-speech translation ability.

"This is possibly 10-year kind of horizon in which we should aim to break these problems and come out with a solution. Within three years, to my mind, we will be able to make a significant amount of progress," Sawhney said.

Citing a study, Sawhney said that 0.055 per cent of websites were found with content in Hindi and next Indian language which comes closer in Bengali.

"The government is a key stakeholder. We have a large number of websites that we maintain for the Government of India. Currently, most of them are available in English and a part of that content is available in Hindi.

"It is normally not available in other Indian languages. I have a legitimate requirement how do we make content available in Indian languages," Sawhney said.

He said that Indian companies and global giants should look at solving language-related problems of India.

FICCI ICT and Digital Economy Committee co-chair Ajay Data said the government-run National Internet Exchange and National Informatics Centre should make available the website name-registration facility to people in their desired native language.

"This will help those people develop content who are expert in their language. It will be easy to bring non-English speaking people online if government websites provide content in vernacular language. This will provide access to Digital governance services to large mass who don't access internet due to language barrier," Data said.