Kohima, February 3: A multidisciplinary research team has won Second Prize at the AI-Powered Education Global Award 2025–2026, organised by the ASEM Lifelong Learning Hub at Chulalongkorn University, for its innovative project titled “Preserving Heritage through Technology: A Scalable NLP Solution for Nagamese Language (NagaLangue.ai).”
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| Researchers from Nagaland University and partner institutions pose with officials at the ASEM Lifelong Learning Hub, Thailand, after winning second prize for the Nagamese AI project NagaLangue.ai. |
According to a release from Nagaland University, the award-winning project addresses a critical gap in artificial intelligence by improving machine translation for low-resource and underrepresented languages, with a special focus on Nagamese, a widely spoken creole in Northeast India.
The project employs a token-augmented adaptation of the mBART-50 multilingual model, introducing language-specific tokens to significantly enhance translation accuracy without requiring costly architectural changes or large-scale retraining. Experimental results showed notable performance gains, with Nagamese–English translation BLEU scores improving from 81.25 to 85.42, alongside up to a 40% reduction in accent-induced translation errors compared to leading multilingual models such as Transformer, M2M-100 and NLLB-200.
The researchers said the solution has strong potential for scalable deployment across education, digital governance, immigration workflows and multilingual platforms, while also contributing to linguistic equity and cultural preservation.
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The study was led by R. Vasanthan, Associate Professor, and co-authored by researchers from Nagaland University, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, National College (Autonomous) Tiruchirappalli, Central University of Haryana, and Central University of Tamil Nadu.
By integrating advanced natural language processing techniques with cultural sensitivity, NagaLangue.ai sets a global benchmark for how AI can be leveraged to preserve linguistic heritage while advancing inclusive and equitable education technologies.
