MCLI will create models to preserve classical Indian languages: Rohan Murty

With classical languages losing their stewards and scholars being replaced by English-speaking professionals, producing high-quality translations in the years to come will be a serious challenge, said Rohan Murty on Tuesday, while celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Murty Classical Library of India (MCLI).

With classical languages losing their stewards and scholars being replaced by English-speaking professionals, producing high-quality translations in the years to come will be a serious challenge, said Rohan Murty on Tuesday, while celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Murty Classical Library of India (MCLI).

While MCLI’s focus presently is to preserve and translate texts into classical languages, given the challenges at hand, it is imperative to preserve the languages too and not just the texts, he said, noting that language models could be an effective way to do this. Language models are machine learning models that can analyse texts and learn patterns.

“When trained on existing and future MCLI translations, these models can learn the linguistic nuances and structure of the classical texts and capture the essence that otherwise might have been lost,” he said.

Quickly adding that models cannot replace the depth of human scholarship, Mr. Murty however noted these models could serve as an “insurance policy” for future generations and MCLI is in a prime position to do this.

MCLI ranks among the largest active translation efforts in the world. The models along with the expertise of scholars will become critical in the efforts to preserve the millions of untranslated texts, he said.

Ever since its inception, MCLI has produced 50 volumes spanning 14 different languages. According to Mr. Murty, this covers around 2,500 years of Indian literary tradition. The languages include Kannada, Apabhramsa, Bengali, Persian, Prakrit, Pali, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Telugu, Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, Marathi, and Tulu.

“Today, over 80 universities worldwide use these books in their classrooms...Through MCLI, India and more broadly South Asia’s literary tradition have taken the right place in the global discourse of classical literature,“ he said.