Linguistics Justice League Showcases Innovative EduLang App at NYLC Conference
Linguistics Justice League (LJL) made waves at the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) for Service-Learning Excellence Award conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where they were one of just five teams selected to attend with a full scholarship. Subha Vadlamannati, the founder of LJL, and Eshaan Barkataki, EduLang (a LJL product) co-chief technologist, presented their innovative project, EduLang, to an enthusiastic audience of government officials, organizational leaders, and strategic partners.
EduLang is a multilingual storytelling library app that translates kids’ books into a staggering 108 languages, and during the conference, Subha and Eshaan shared their plans for scaling the app’s Text to Speech and Speech to Text infrastructure across multiple languages to improve reading comprehension and writing skills. One of the app’s key inventions is a scanner that allows users to scan PDF pages. These pages are autotranslated by the app into 108 languages using a machine translation API. The team has big plans for the future, including partnering with organizations to source better content and adding live tutoring through volunteers who speak low-resource languages. They also aim to use the latest NLP technology to create content to translate into low resourced languages.
During their presentation, Subha and Eshaan highlighted the differences between EduLang and Google Translate. While Google Translate offers many languages, it doesn’t have all the dialects, and it replaces English text with the translated text. In contrast, EduLang preserves the English text while adding the new translated text, providing a seamless experience for multilingual learners. The app is geared towards beginner language learners of any age.
The conference offered a platform to witness and learn about the Bill of Rights and the inspirational leadership of women in America among many other key aspects.The conference was a rewarding experience for the attendees, who were inspired by the innovative ideas and inspiring stories shared. The LJL team left with a deeper understanding of the pressing issues faced by society today and the efforts being made to address them. They plan to bring this knowledge back to their local community to make a positive impact.
Overall, LJL’s presentation at the NYLC conference was an exciting moment for the team and a testament to their commitment to creating innovative solutions for language learners. With big plans for the future, the team is poised to make an even greater impact in the years to come.