IIIT Hyderabad’s Language Research Centre Reflects on 25 Years of Transformative Contributions

IIIT Hyderabad’s Language Technologies Research Centre celebrated its 25th anniversary with a two-day event, featuring insightful talks and panel discussions on its vision, mission, journey, and the future of language technologies.

The Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC) at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH) celebrated its 25th anniversary. The program featured engaging talks and panel discussions that explored the centre’s vision, mission, evolution, and the future of language technologies. The event underscored the significance of academic research addressing real-world challenges, emphasized the importance of collaboration in advancing technology, and highlighted the transformative role of language technology in promoting regional languages and driving social impact.

BhashaVerse Language Resources Machine Translation Models

To mark the occasion, LTRC launched the BhashaVerse language resource machine translation models, available for free download. This advanced multitask encoder-decoder model can translate between any of the 36 languages, including Tulu, Bodo, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Santhali, and more. It supports machine translation evaluation, error identification, and automatic post-editing for 10 billion sentence pairs.

The Centre also unveiled the development of the BhashaVerse LLM decoder model for 36 Indian languages, designed for applications such as summarization, Q&A, and more, with fine-tuning options. In addition, LTRC released 10 billion synthetically generated and curated Bhashik datasets for Indian language pairs.

These include a generic dataset, one focused on the Education domain covering 17 fields in English and 5 Indian languages, and another for the Health domain in English and 8 Indian languages. For the first time in Indian languages, a dataset for automatic post-editing of text and machine translation evaluation has also been made available.

Founded in October 1999, LTRC was one of India’s first research centres dedicated to enabling machines to understand and derive meaning from human languages, with a focus on Indian languages. Today, it is South Asia's largest academic centre for speech and language technology. Initially concentrating on Machine Translation, Semantic Parsing, and Information Extraction, LTRC has since expanded to include Speech Recognition, Text Generation, Sentiment Analysis, Dialogue Systems, and more. The centre has fostered a thriving research ecosystem, with many of its pioneering innovations continuing to shape the field.

Commenting on LTRC and its impact, Prof Vasudeva Varma, Head, LTRC said, “As the first natural language processing centre in the country we have pioneered several aspects of research and education. We have trained brilliant minds who are leading advances worldwide. Our lasting contribution in research, open datasets, tools and technologies have made huge impact. Our successful technology transfers have brought industry and academic closer. We look forward to continuing to push the boundaries and our legacy of innovation”. 

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