Joy after Assamese finds place in Google Translate

Guwahati: The Assamese language has finally found pride of place in Google Translate. After six years of tireless efforts on the part of the Assamese diaspora spread over 22 countries around the world and the call by the former DGP of Assam Police to take up the challenge on a mission mode, the language got its recognition.
On Wednesday, Google announced it has added 24 new languages to Google Translate, including eight Indian languages among which three are from the northeast — Assamese, Meiteilon (Manipuri) and Mizo. There are about 25 million users of Assamese language, Meitei has about 2 million users and Mizo has about 8,30,000 users.
Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tweeted, “Delighted that @Google has added Assamese in its language translation tool among the 24 new languages incorporated, 8 of which are native to India. This will promote more research on the beautiful language & popularise its use across digital platforms.”
Since 2016, the volunteers engaged by Google began contributing towards Assamese language resources to enrich the language data bank of the search engine.
Asam Sahitya Sabha (ASS) president Kuladhar Saikia, who is a former IPS officer and ex-DGP of Assam Police, made a global call to Assamese speakers during the long period of the pandemic to go on a mission mode to contribute more resources in Assamese language to enter Google Translate. “The contributions of Assamese language resources have been significant in the last two years and recently the number of such contributions crossed 5.5 lakh,” he said.
At the Sualkuchi session of Sahitya Sabha, where Saikia officially took charge as president of the state’s apex literary body in 2020, he vouched that Assamese language would get recognition in Google Translate.
“The challenge was huge as contributions to the language were very low to get listed in the machine learning process. The system works when the material available for a language is more. I made a public appeal during the lockdown in 2020 that we must work to put more contributions in Google Translate. Many youths joined the mission and I also reached out to our people residing in around 22 countries to contribute towards this goal.”