Bharatavani – India’s First & Largest Multilingual Online Dictionary, Launched with 22 Languages

An initiative with an objective of delivering knowledge in and about all Indian languages using multimedia formats.

Union HRD minister, Smriti Irani launched a multilingual knowledge portal www.bharatavani.in on Wednesday, which aims to bring the entire knowledge base of India from textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, glossaries, language learning tools etc. in multimedia format on a single platform.

The portal has been launched in 22 scheduled languages and aims to incorporate 100 more languages.

Currently, more than 130 dictionaries, glossaries and terminology are available on the web portal. These dictionaries are available in text and PDF formats. The Home Page (bharatavani.in) will be in Hindi – English interface. Separate sub domains like <language>.bharatavni.in are available for all the other languages. For example, Kannada content is primarily available on kannada.bharatavani.in.

The aim of the website is to publish all the available content in different languages. All the content in print and other formats will be digitized and put onto the portal in the form of searchable text.

According to the information on the website, Bharatavani collects knowledge content in all the enlisted languages from all the Government and Non-Governmental Institutions, Educational Institutions, Board of Education, Directorate of Textbooks, Universities, Academies, Publication Houses, etc. It will also request private institutions to share their content for this online project.

Here’s a video tweeted by MHRD that explains it further:

HRM @smritiirani launched #Bharatavani portal & app to learn Indian languages, dictionaries, textbooks & literature.https://t.co/Lk9fMankC2
— Ministry of HRD (@HRDMinistry) May 25, 2016

MHRD also launched the Bharatavani Multi-lingual App. This App, also called Bharatavani, will enable users to search for one language text in another language and get the meanings in different languages. The app currently has 35 multilingual dictionaries and aims to extend it to 250 dictionaries with a year’s time.

Bharatavani is run by a National Advisory Committee comprising of eminent linguists, and knowledge experts, a Technology Advisory Committee for guidance on the technological requirements on the portal and language tools development, and a Language Editorial Committee to aggregate content for the website. The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru is implementing this project for the MHRD.

– Pooja Naik

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