Govt ropes in IIT experts for creation of Hindi Wikipedia

The Indian version of Wikipedia will be available for providing information related to science and technology and based on the feedback, it will be expanded to other fields. 

The Central government has roped in experts from various Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) for creation of an Indian version of Wikipedia. The Department of Science and Technology is working for creation of Wikipedia in Hindi and other major Indian languages through a two-step process. 

As per a report published in The New Indian Express, initially, the Indian version of Wikipedia will be available for providing information related to science and technology and based on the feedback, it will be expanded to other fields. 

“The first process will be machine translation and then vetting by experts in the field to provide accurate and authentic information before it is posted for the people to read. After the experts make corrections in the machine tools, it will be automatically picked up by the tools for future reference,” said a DST official. 

A team of experts from IIT Patna, IIT Kanpur, IIIT Hyderabad along with Centre for cyber physical systems are focusing on developing machine translational tools. After that a dedicated team of experts will be pressed and roped in for vetting the information. 

“Initially the information will be related to science and technology in Hindi and major regional languages. As of now, the information on topics in the Indian language is limited and this will be a platform to reach out to common people who don’t speak English,” the official added. 

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