The Ministry of Tribal Affairs on Monday unveiled the beta version of ‘Adi Vaani’, an AI-powered translation tool designed to support and preserve India’s tribal languages. Developed with contributions from academicians, educators, and tribal language experts, the app can translate Hindi and English into tribal languages and vice versa, laying the groundwork for future large language models dedicated to these tongues.
The project is led by a consortium of premier institutes, including IIT Delhi, BITS-Pilani, and IIIT Naya Raipur, in collaboration with tribal research bodies across Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Meghalaya.
India is home to 10.45 crore Scheduled Tribe members, speaking 461 tribal languages and 71 distinct mother tongues. Of these, 82 languages are considered vulnerable, while 42 are critically endangered. ‘Adi Vaani’ will initially offer translation services for Bhili, Gondi, Santali, and Mundari, some of the more widely spoken tribal languages. Bhili alone is spoken by over one crore people across Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Future updates will include languages such as Kui (Odisha) and Garo (Meghalaya, Assam, and parts of Tripura).
The app will also complement the Adi Karmayogi Abhiyan, a government initiative to build grassroots tribal leadership, aiming to ensure widespread adoption within tribal communities.
Creating the AI model posed significant challenges. Developers had to collect, validate, and collate a vast corpus of words and sentences from tribal languages. More than 250 native speakers, community leaders, and educators contributed, compiling dictionaries, translating NCERT textbooks, recording folklore, and documenting oral literature to train the models.
In addition, ‘Adi Vaani’ integrates tribal language primers developed by NCERT and the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysuru, which support foundational learning in mother tongues. Primers for 117 languages, including 89 tribal languages such as Santali, Warli, and Pawri, are incorporated into the app.
Vibhu Nayar, Secretary of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, said the translation tool will enhance the implementation of government schemes at the grassroots level and improve access to educational resources for tribal students through integrated OCR (optical character recognition) functionality.
The app is scheduled for official release on the Google Play Store from Friday and marks a significant step toward preserving India’s rich linguistic diversity while leveraging AI to empower tribal communities.
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