Medium of Education

When I read this newspaper article on the UGC calling for “all higher education institutions to allow students to write answers in their mother tongue… even when the course is offered in the English language”, I was taken aback. To that end, the circular also asked for a “list of topics on which regional textbooks or student material will be required”. That list would apparently help identify the scale of translations required.

 

The UGC said this move was triggered by the National Education Policy (NEP)’s call for education to be made available in the local language. That reminded me of the part in Nilakantan RS’s South vs North where he criticized the local language approach saying the South prefers English as the medium, which reflects market realities. Then again, not everyone cares that international communications and publications are overwhelmingly in English – after all, what fraction of the Indian population will ever work in roles that needs them to keep up with or interact with international peers?

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Then I read Rahul Matthan’s article on the language barrier problem with the Internet – most popular websites are in English, even though most of the world’s population isn’t comfortable in English:

“In 1996, 80% of internet users spoke English. By 2010, that dropped to 27.3%.”

It is inevitable, says Matthan, that the language-share of the content on the Internet will start to change to reflect the changing demographic.

 

But, says Matthan, the solution isn’t to wait for a “more linguistically representative internet” to develop. Rather, India needs to accelerate the use of translation tech. Yes, that has already started wrt digital services the Indian government provides:

“Bhashini (is a) digital public platform for languages designed to ensure that digital content can be delivered in all Indian languages using artificial intelligence (AI) and allied technologies for speech-to-speech translation.”

It also has a crowdsourcing component, where individuals can volunteer to translate content.

 

Good while this is, Matthan says we need to train AI’s with large datasets to do the translation across Indian languages. The archives of Doordarshan and All India Radio, which often created content across multiple Indian languages, could serve as one of the datasets to train such AI’s on, he says.

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Can AI translation help students who are more comfortable in regional languages? People like us react negatively to such ideas. But certain states barely use English. For kids in such states, surely it is better to be educated in their regional language than to struggle and fail with English.

 

As Nilakantan’s book points out, wages improve as a population gets more educated. Why insist everyone needs to learn in English? Isn’t being educated in some language better than not being educated at all?

 

But forcing the regional language on all isn’t a good idea either. Can the Center and states allow students the option to select the language of education?

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