IIIT-Hyderabad Spearheads Development of India's First AI-Powered Tribal Language Translator

India's first AI-powered tribal language translator, 'Adi Vaani', has been launched by the Central government with significant contributions from IIIT-Hyderabad. The platform, available on Google Play and as a web application, currently supports Santali, Bhili, Mundari, and Gondi languages, with plans to add Kui and Garo soon.

Developed through collaboration between premier institutions including IIT Delhi, IIIT Hyderabad, BITS Pilani, and IIIT Naya Raipur, alongside Tribal Research Institutes across five states, the translator offers real-time conversion of both text and speech between Hindi/English and tribal languages. This technological advancement addresses a critical need, as Census 2011 data reveals that India has 461 tribal languages, with 81 vulnerable and 42 critically endangered.

The Speech and Natural Language Processing groups at IIIT-Hyderabad employed cutting-edge Transformer-based neural machine translation architecture for the system. Researchers also developed Text-to-Speech tools for three languages, working closely with native speakers to ensure accuracy and cultural authenticity. Beyond translation, 'Adi Vaani' preserves folklore and oral traditions through optical character recognition technology while supporting civic inclusion by disseminating information about government schemes.