Mysuru: The Union Ministry of Education is committed to make Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) in Mysuru stronger and autonomous to handle its multiple roles in promotion of Indian languages, said Neeta Prasad, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Education on Wednesday.
She was speaking virtually at the 56th foundation day of CIIL organised at its premises in Mysuru on Wednesday.
Neeta said, "CIIL plays a major role in empowering people, especially youth by making knowledge accessible to all in whatever language they are comfortable with. This will help attain Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream of 'Vikasith Bharath', where every one will be able to contribute to the nation building process".
She also added, "Language should not become a hurdle in academic or skill attainment. National Education Policy has emphasised on usage of at least 22 Indian languages upto class 5 or class 8, and even in higher education to support to students".
"As a nodal language agency, it has been working with various academic and language institutions to provide teaching and study materials in different Indian languages in order to support students and faculty. It is also playing vital role in resource creation, dissemination, trainings for language teaching and learning, setting standards for language teaching methodology," Neeta said.
New Projects
She said, "CIIL is taking up a project to come up with study materials in at least 22 Indian languages. It is taking another project to integrate and bring all multi language dictionaries on a single platform. It is also going to be recognised as Centre for Translation and Interpretation (T and I) as NEP has emphasised on establishing an Institute for T and I."
CIIL online book store portal
On the occasion, Neeta Prasad launched CIIL online book store portal. This portal is a fully automated online sale system of all the books of CIIL. Currently, it offers purchase of over 450 titles which are available in stock. It facilitates online payment systems, and automated shipping based on user's choice. It has an automated stock maintenance system.
Prof Girishnath Jha, Chairman, Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology, spoke on 'Recent trends in natural language processing in the context of large language models'. Col. Yuvraj Malik, Director, National Book Trust, spoke on 'Knowledge text in Indian languages from production to distribution'.
Prof Shailendra Mohan, Director, CIIL, Sujoy Sarkar, L-JRO, CIIL, were also present.