BHASHINI AI aims to expand multilingual access in academic research

The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) is exploring the use of multilingual artificial intelligence to increase accessibility in academic and research settings. During the 29th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD-2026) at IIT Delhi, officials demonstrated how the platform’s tools—including speech-to-text, translation, optical character recognition (OCR), and document translation—can help universities and libraries overcome language barriers.

A live demonstration of Shrutlekh showcased real-time speech transcription with simultaneous translation, highlighting its utility for lectures, seminars, and conferences. The division also emphasized the potential for AI-powered translation of lengthy, specialized academic documents such as electronic theses and dissertations.

BHASHINI’s ecosystem has recorded over 10 billion cumulative AI inferences and supports 36 Indian languages for text, 23 Indian languages for voice, and 35 international languages. Additionally, its website translation plugin provides multilingual access to more than 800 government websites. The division presented BHASHINI Pragati, a document translation workbench developed for the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, as a model for structured translation and review.