The TDIL Program and the Indian Langauge Corpora Intitiative (ILCI)

Abstract

India is considered a linguistic ocean with 4 language families and 22 scheduled national languages, and 100 un-scheduled languages reported by the 2001 census. This puts tremendous pressures on the Indian government to not only have comprehensive language policies, but also to create resources for their maintenance and development. In the age of information technology, there is a greater need to have a fine balance between allocation of resources to each language keeping in view the political compulsions, electoral potential of a linguistic community and other issues. In this connection, the government of India through various ministries and a think tank consisting of eminent linguistics and policy makers has done a commendable job despite the obvious roadblocks. This paper describes the Indian government’s policies towards language development and maintenance in the age of technology through the Ministry of HRD through its various agencies and the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (MCIT) through its dedicated program called TDIL (Technology Development for Indian Languages). The paper also describes some of the recent activities of the TDIL in general and in particular, an innovative corpora project called ILCI - Indian Languages Corpora Initiative.

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