Russia Trains AI to Learn the Endangered Language of Crimean Tatars

A new AI project in Russia is tackling the challenge of preserving the Crimean Tatar language — with a focus on linguistic precision.

Russia is training artificial intelligence to understand and translate one of the country’s rarest and most endangered languages: Crimean Tatar. Neural networks will be fed machine-readable texts in both Crimean Tatar and Russian. Developers believe that this dual-language input will improve translation quality and accelerate learning.

The project will place special emphasis on accurately capturing the language’s unique grammatical structures and idiomatic expressions. According to Komsomolskaya Pravda, the initiative is being spearheaded by the I. Gasprinsky Media Center, the House of the Peoples of Russia, and the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs.

This is not Russia’s first foray into advanced language tech. A domestic company previously created an AI called Nikola, capable of translating texts across 42 languages — not just casual speech, but also complex scientific and technical content.