The Indian Government’s e-Bhasha platform underwent a preliminary review last week and is likely to be ready for deployment in the next two months, reports the Economic Times. This initiative, which was part of BJP’s 2014 manifesto, was first announced by the President in June this year.

The e-Bhasha platform aims to develop and disperse Indic language content and will be rolled out as a MMP (mission mode project). At this year’s #NAMAIndic Summit, former head of public policy and government affairs at Google India, Venkatesh Hariharan had also mentioned that the e-Bhasha project had been given mission mode status. MMPs are individual projects within the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), with clearly defined objective scopes, milestones and implementation timelines and focus on only one aspect of e-governance, like banking, land records etc. However, according to DeitY, the e-Bhasha project will be implemented differently from a typical MMP.

As for the development of the platform, DeitY is not looking to develop all the technology and tools for the project in-house, instead it will outsource certain aspects to various institutions, organizations and individuals. Currently, DeitY’s Technical Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) division, which provides various Indic language software and tools, handles all the research.

It will be interesting to see how exactly DeitY plans to roll out the project, by translating websites, providing translation software, providing fonts to developers, browser extensions and other such means, or a combination of the above.

Other Indic language initiatives:

– In November last year the National Translation Mission started preparing a machine translation system (MTS) to instantly translate texts from vernacular Indian languages to English. Accordingly, the institute started developing scientific and technical terminologies in 69 disciplines of study in 22 languages, as a part of the project.

– The TDIL division of DeitY runs a Web Standardization Initiative, which aims to work towards the internationalization of web standards with context to Indian languages. The initiative aims to enable all web related standards with 22 Indic languages, for a seamless native language experience.

Related:

– Should the Indian government mandate Indic languages for mobile handsets? #NAMAindic

– DeitY envisaged ‘Digital India’ gets a nod from the cabinet