On June 4, 2024, Venerable Miao Guang, Deputy Chancellor of the Fo Guang Shan Institute of Humanistic Buddhism, and Professor Kurt Keutzer, head of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) laboratory and the MITRA project at the University of California, Berkeley, signed a cooperation agreement to develop artificial intelligence tools for translating Buddhist texts. The agreement aims to improve the efficiency and quality of English translations of Buddhist texts, such as the Buddhist Canon and the Complete Works of Venerable Master Hsing Yun.
The signing ceremony was attended by ten participants, including Venerable Ru Yang, Abbess of Fo Guang Shan North California Region; Dr. Robert Sharf, Chair of the Berkeley Center for Buddhist Studies; Sebastian Nierdich, Technical Director of the MITRA Project at UC Berkeley; Howie X. Lan, Programmer and Web Developer, UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Research Office; and Venerable Zhi Yue, Editor of the Fo Guang Dictionary English Translation Project.
The AI model, developed by combining MITRA's technology and its corpus of over 3 million parallel texts in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhist scriptures with Fo Guang Shan Institute of Humanistic Buddhism's 230,000 entries of bilingual Chinese-English corpora, is already capable of translating Buddhist texts in multiple languages, including Chinese, English, Japanese, Sanskrit, Pali, and Tibetan. The module has achieved excellent scores on AI evaluation platforms such as BLEU and chrF++.
Dr. Kurt Keutzer expressed his honor in collaborating with Fo Guang Shan on this project, which will allow the Dharma to spread more widely throughout the world. He noted that modern technology and AI can significantly improve translation efficiency and accuracy, and by utilizing high-quality data resources, better results can be achieved compared to traditional translation processes. Additionally, it can expand the scope of knowledge and thought dissemination, enabling wider access to important Buddhist resources.
Prior to the signing, Dr. Sebastian Nehrdich explained the evaluation criteria for MITRA's translation accuracy, introduced the team and data analysis, and outlined the specific scope and outcomes of the collaboration. Venerable Miao Guang introduced Fo Guang Shan's translation team and the current translation content of the Fo Guang Dictionary of Buddhism and the Complete Works of Venerable Master Hsing Yun, expressing hope that AI tools can be used to accelerate multi-language Dharma propagation in the future.
The officially signed cooperation agreement aims to harness the potential of AI to bring Buddhist scriptures and the Complete Works of Venerable Master Hsing Yun to a wider modern readership. The close collaboration between the Fo Guang Shan Institute of Humanistic Buddhism and the UC Berkeley MITRA project seeks to integrate Buddhist wisdom with modern technological innovation, jointly promoting the development of Buddhist literature translation. The official name and user interface of this multi-language Buddhist translation tool are expected to be announced by the end of 2024 and will be provided to Buddhist translators for testing and use. For related information, please visit the Fo Guang Shan Institute of Humanistic Buddhism's website on Buddhist text translation and AI application: https://fgs-translation.org.
