Even as the celebrations over Team India’s medals haul at the International Linguistics Olympiad 2024 are yet to die down, we take a look at the path to the finale that unfolds for the Indian contingent.
Competing against 206 participants drawn from 51 teams across 38 countries, the Indian contestants shone at the 21st International Linguistic Olympiad (IOL) held in Brasília, Brazil, from July 23 to July 31, 2024. The Indian team demonstrated their prowess in the individual categories with Animikha Dutta Dhar bagging a silver medal, Shrilakshmi Venkatraman and Faraz Ahmed Siddiqui winning a bronze medal each and Ananya Agarwal receiving an Honourable Mention.
India has been competing at the IOL since 2009 but it’s start itself was rather unconventional. The prevailing norm for countries’ participation in the contest is based on each country sending 1 or 2 teams whose composition is based on the winners of their national Linguistics Olympiad. But there had never been a national level Linguistics contest held up until then. Hence the selection of the Indian team itself was rather atypical – an ad-hoc group of 3 students with only this in common: an interest and excellence in Linguistics as well as a desire to compete internationally. Despite the apparent lack of experience, Team India’s debut on the world stage saw it bagging not only a Silver medal but also the ‘Best Solution’ award. Since then, India has participated in 15 Olympiads bringing back 31 medals, 1 bronze trophy, 9 best-solution prizes, 16 honourable mentions and has sent 6 repeat medallists to the Hall of Fame.
Modest Beginnings
“The first Indian team had to approach Dr. Avinash Pandey from the Department of Linguistics, University of Bombay to support their endeavour. By 2013, Dr. Monojit Choudhury of Microsoft Research (MSR) joined the efforts too and a 2-part screening process for schoolkids kicked in. Around 25 students from the open round were selected for round 2 and MSR supported the team that went on to represent India in the IOL. From 2014 onwards, the screening process moved from Bombay to Bangalore and many more people began to get involved,” recalls Prof. Dipti Misra, Language Technologies Research Centre, IIITH, who has been involved in the organising of the national-level screening process for years. For a country that was a little late to the game, it is a testimony of the surge in interest and participation that saw India playing host to the IOL in the year 2016 in Mysore. “It was the same year that IIITH hosted round 2 of the national screening for the first time,” states Prof. Dipti.
“The first Indian team had to approach Dr. Avinash Pandey from the Department of Linguistics, University of Bombay to support their endeavour. By 2013, Dr. Monojit Choudhury of Microsoft Research (MSR) joined the efforts too and a 2-part screening process for schoolkids kicked in. Around 25 students from the open round were selected for round 2 and MSR supported the team that went on to represent India in the IOL. From 2014 onwards, the screening process moved from Bombay to Bangalore and many more people began to get involved,” recalls Prof. Dipti Misra, Language Technologies Research Centre, IIITH, who has been involved in the organising of the national-level screening process for years. For a country that was a little late to the game, it is a testimony of the surge in interest and participation that saw India playing host to the IOL in the year 2016 in Mysore. “It was the same year that IIITH hosted round 2 of the national screening for the first time,” states Prof. Dipti.
Role of APLO
“The past few years, during the pandemic, like other countries, we too followed the Asia Pacific Linguistics Olympiad (APLO) as our selection method (to the IOL) for multiple reasons,” explains Prof. Manish Shrivastava, LTRC, who has led Team India to the IOL on multiple occasions. “One, the quality of the competition and the quality of the questions – both are very high. Second, the way it is organised ensures that the diversity and challenge is continuously increasing. More and more countries are joining in, including India, and more experts are joining (from India) too, so the pool of experts and jury is leading up to a very high quality entrance mechanism that allows our students to interact with participating countries. Additionally, we’re also trying to get organisers of APLO to come and coach our students,” he says. Calling the APLO similar to the IOL in spirit and with respect to the nature and style of the problems, Prof. Parameswari however clarifies that unlike the IOL, the APLO is not a contest where students from different countries physically meet in one place to participate. “Instead, all contestants compete in their home country on the same day. This year, it was held in April,” she says. Shortlisted candidates from round 1 appear for APLO. Based on APLO results, students are further screened for the next round which is the Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO).
“The past few years, during the pandemic, like other countries, we too followed the Asia Pacific Linguistics Olympiad (APLO) as our selection method (to the IOL) for multiple reasons,” explains Prof. Manish Shrivastava, LTRC, who has led Team India to the IOL on multiple occasions. “One, the quality of the competition and the quality of the questions – both are very high. Second, the way it is organised ensures that the diversity and challenge is continuously increasing. More and more countries are joining in, including India, and more experts are joining (from India) too, so the pool of experts and jury is leading up to a very high quality entrance mechanism that allows our students to interact with participating countries. Additionally, we’re also trying to get organisers of APLO to come and coach our students,” he says. Calling the APLO similar to the IOL in spirit and with respect to the nature and style of the problems, Prof. Parameswari however clarifies that unlike the IOL, the APLO is not a contest where students from different countries physically meet in one place to participate. “Instead, all contestants compete in their home country on the same day. This year, it was held in April,” she says. Shortlisted candidates from round 1 appear for APLO. Based on APLO results, students are further screened for the next round which is the Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PLO).
Role of PLO
The national-level screening process and subsequent training of the candidates who represent India at the IOL is referred to as the PLO. It is a collaborative effort of multiple institutes such as the Microsoft Research Labs India, IIITH, JNU Delhi, and the University of Mumbai and is actively supported by regional coordinators across the country including Chennai Mathematical Institute, IIT Guwahati, SNLTR Kolkata and IIT Patna. While the preliminary round is conducted in multiple centres, from the year 2016, IIITH has been hosting Round 2 which is a 7-10 day camp where the selected students are exposed to concepts such as phonology, semantics, historical linguistics, computational linguistics and more by some of the top linguistics from the country and overseas as well. According to him, the camp hosted by IIITH plays several roles. “We want to promote linguistics itself as a field of study. Plus, this is an excellent way of getting the community to know each other. It leads to offline links so that they can stay in touch and come back next year stronger. It has led to amazing outcomes – silver medals, multiple honourable mentions and so on.”
The national-level screening process and subsequent training of the candidates who represent India at the IOL is referred to as the PLO. It is a collaborative effort of multiple institutes such as the Microsoft Research Labs India, IIITH, JNU Delhi, and the University of Mumbai and is actively supported by regional coordinators across the country including Chennai Mathematical Institute, IIT Guwahati, SNLTR Kolkata and IIT Patna. While the preliminary round is conducted in multiple centres, from the year 2016, IIITH has been hosting Round 2 which is a 7-10 day camp where the selected students are exposed to concepts such as phonology, semantics, historical linguistics, computational linguistics and more by some of the top linguistics from the country and overseas as well. According to him, the camp hosted by IIITH plays several roles. “We want to promote linguistics itself as a field of study. Plus, this is an excellent way of getting the community to know each other. It leads to offline links so that they can stay in touch and come back next year stronger. It has led to amazing outcomes – silver medals, multiple honourable mentions and so on.”
Computational Linguistics Degree
With the largest natural language processing and related research group in the country nestled on the institute’s campus, the Language Technology Research Center (LTRC) has had linguists, computer scientists and language scholars all working together for many years on multiple aspects of languages – understanding, translating, retrieval, manipulation and more. “The Linguistics Olympiad has a very special role to play in IIITH’s academic structure,” remarks Prof. P J Narayanan, Director, IIITH, referring to the Dual Degree program that offers a BTech in Computer Science and an MS by Research in Computational Linguistics (CLD). Students who clear Round 1 of the PLO are eligible to directly appear for the interview round of this channel of admission. “For the first 2 years, we selected candidates through JEE but then we started conducting our own exam because we realised we were not looking for regular engineering aspirants; we were looking for people who found language fascinating. So students who cleared the institute exam were invited for an interview and later, students who did well in the Linguistics Olympiad were directly invited for interviews,” recounts Prof. Dipti.
With the largest natural language processing and related research group in the country nestled on the institute’s campus, the Language Technology Research Center (LTRC) has had linguists, computer scientists and language scholars all working together for many years on multiple aspects of languages – understanding, translating, retrieval, manipulation and more. “The Linguistics Olympiad has a very special role to play in IIITH’s academic structure,” remarks Prof. P J Narayanan, Director, IIITH, referring to the Dual Degree program that offers a BTech in Computer Science and an MS by Research in Computational Linguistics (CLD). Students who clear Round 1 of the PLO are eligible to directly appear for the interview round of this channel of admission. “For the first 2 years, we selected candidates through JEE but then we started conducting our own exam because we realised we were not looking for regular engineering aspirants; we were looking for people who found language fascinating. So students who cleared the institute exam were invited for an interview and later, students who did well in the Linguistics Olympiad were directly invited for interviews,” recounts Prof. Dipti.