A group of Indian innovators has devised a cheap and user-friendly technological solution to the communication problems posed by the diversity of languages in the country and abroad.

Past attempts to break the language barrier proved too costly to be implemented on a mass scale, reports Grassroots Features. But the new low-cost innovation could solve this impossible hurdle to communication and development.

Hemant Babu, 39, who has worked on the project for two years, said this technology to increase linguistic tolerance works on the same principle as FM radio. Non-technical users, he assured, will be able to operate it with ease.

For instance, at a conference where English speakers are addressing a Hindi-speaking audience, listeners will be provided with a pocket-sized radio set and headphones.

With the aid of these, the audience can listen to simultaneous translations of the speeches by an interpreter, being transmitted over a low band frequency from a control room in the conference centre.

The radio sets, which can be reused over a long period of time, cost between Rs.35 and Rs.120.

In late November, this simple method was successfully used at a three-day national convention in Bhopal, where a number of experts had gathered to discuss various issues related to the Union Carbide gas disaster.

Courtesy the radio sets she had been given at the beginning of the conference, Rashida Bi, a gas victim who cannot read and write either Hindi or English, was able to understand the English speaking experts.

Although Rashida has attended many conferences on the Bhopal tragedy in the last two decades, this was the first time she was able to understand the experts' opinion.

"Initially I could not believe that we could understand in Hindi what was being said in English," she said.

Munawar Husain, another victim, said, "With the radio set we were able to ask questions directly to experts and understand their answers. For the first time I was able to express my views and interact with experts".

The Bhopal conference was attended by Babu and other representatives of the informal group that has developed this revolutionary aid to multi-lingual communication.

The innovators, who are part of an international network of voluntary interpreters, activists and technicians called "Babels", wish to disseminate their technology free of charge.

"In fact we want it to spread as fast and as widely as it can. Its widespread use will help marginalized sections to share their concerns and consolidate their position," said Babu.

The translation equipment and technology used are part of a larger political process to break linguistic barriers across cultures and regions.

"It is a project to empower people of diverse linguistic groups to express and understand issues in their own language," said Babu.

Babu's project also involves members of Nomad, an organisation that develops tools for digital translation and archiving.

The FM based translation system was first used during the World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai. It brought down the cost of translations from Rs.9,800,000 ($223,000) to Rs.600,000 ($13,000).

The affordability and simplicity of this technology has attracted the attention of many social movements across the world. It was used at "Social Forum for South America" at Quito, Ecuador in July 2004.

A Greenpeace conference used this system last month in India. Babu and his team are now preparing to put their innovation to good use at the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre, Brazil in January 2005.