NIT Srinagar launches AI challenge for Kashmiri translation

The National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar has launched KATHE 2026, a national Artificial Intelligence challenge focused on developing English-to-Kashmiri machine translation models. Organized by Gaash Lab in collaboration with the Bureau of Indian Standards and the University of Kashmir, the initiative aims to integrate the Kashmiri language into the growing AI and Natural Language Processing ecosystem.

Participants will build and evaluate their AI models on the Kaggle platform using provided datasets and evaluation frameworks. The competition is designed to address the lack of representation for low-resource languages in modern computational systems. Online submissions are open until August 17, 2026, leading to an offline finale at NIT Srinagar on August 21, which will include live model demonstrations and expert lectures on language technology.