JAY JOSHI
As we move towards the knowledge economy, the role of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) has been growing steadily with advances in technology. As people from across cities and villages of the world get connected to the Internet, making global knowledge accessible in local language is becoming important, and hence the idea of machine translation matters more than ever. When it comes to India, major languages such as Hindi and Marathi have made their presence felt in apps such as Google Translate, but now, a homegrown Goan IT firm TechNirmiti has developed a data model for a programme that enables translation from English to Konkani.
Shrikrishna Parab, Director and CEO of the Mapusa-based firm spoke to TG Life about the use, scope, and future of this app and the impact of machine learning, machine translation and AI on business and jobs.
“This programme is important in many ways. It can come in handy while translating many government documents such as question papers for central government recruitment exams that need to be translated into all official languages, one of which is Konkani,” says Parab. The programme has been created by the company’s COO Sunayana Gawde who originally began working on the project as a part of her thesis for M Tech at IIT Bombay.
Addressing concerns that the rise of the new app could affect the jobs of translators, the IT professional states that rather than negatively affecting a translator’s job, the app is only making it easier. “ A translation goes through many stages incorporating improvements along the way. A translator could take help from the app, and add their own points as and where they see fit. Their skill will play a key role when it comes to final checks and polishing of the translation. So, the app is only making the first stage of the translation easier,” Parab states.
Commenting on the growing role of artificial intelligence in human life, he disagrees that AI will sideline humans in the future. “At the end of the day, all machine intelligence is artificial, so the need for human oversight is always going to be there, and it will never be able to beat humans skill and creativity,” he says.
Goa is now emerging as a hub of IT companies with a number of firms providing IT related services in the state. While there are many such companies, TechNirmiti is different from a typical IT firm in that its focus is on research, informs the CEO. The firm has been working with institutions such as IIT Bombay and MIT Boston on research projects, he adds.
That said, IT industry in Goa is still needs to develop in many aspects, says Parab. “If you go to cities such as Bangalore, you have ‘startup accelerators’. These are hubs that put you in touch with venture capitalists. In Goa, startups face lack of funds in the initial days, and an entrepreneur often has to depend upon personal contacts to raise funds. A number of investors are now coming to the state, and fundraising scene is slowly improving, but accelerators are still important because they can act as connectors between a startup idea with good potential, and a venture capitalist with good credentials and credibility”, concludes the TechNirmiti CEO. The service has a module for corporates as well as an app, and is expected to be out by the end of 2019
