Article by Simran and Mehul
Since its creation by Stéfan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell in 2011, Voyant Tools has emerged as a foundational platform in the field of Digital Humanities, offering accessible yet powerful means for performing textual analysis. Over the years, the platform has expanded its reach, supporting a wide array of analytical functions—from word frequency and collocation visualization to keyword context mapping and trend tracking. As its utility grew across disciplines and institutions, so did its linguistic inclusivity. The interface of Voyant Tools became available in a variety of global languages such as Arabic, Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian, each version contributing to the democratization of text mining technologies across diverse cultural and linguistic landscapes.
Recognizing the transformative potential of such a tool for a wider scholarly audience, Prof. Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell championed a vision of further dissemination—especially into languages that had remained underrepresented in the digital humanities space. In line with this vision, he initiated collaborative efforts with Simran Bhimjyani and Mehul Desai to translate the Voyant interface into Gujarati, marking a significant milestone as the first Indian regional language to be incorporated into the platform. This endeavour reflects not only a commitment to technical accessibility but also a deeper engagement with linguistic diversity as a pillar of global scholarly discourse.
Gujarati, an Indo-Aryan language spoken by over 55 million people worldwide, holds a distinguished place in the linguistic and literary heritage of South Asia. It serves as the official language of the state of Gujarat and is the medium of a rich textual tradition that includes devotional literature, historical chronicles, modernist poetry, and philosophical treatises. From the bhakti poetry of Narsinh Mehta to the reformist prose of Govardhanram Tripathi and the nationalist writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Gujarati literature encapsulates a vibrant spectrum of thought. Despite this intellectual wealth, tools for computational textual analysis in Gujarati have been virtually nonexistent—until now.
Translating the Voyant Tools interface into Gujarati is both a technical and academic undertaking with far-reaching implications. While translating the interface, the deeper challenge lay in the semantic adaptation of specialized terms such as token frequency, animation, Mandala, Bubble, tokenization, and filter, etc. These terms, central to digital text analysis, required thoughtful transliteration and translation strategies to maintain conceptual clarity while remaining accessible to Gujarati-speaking users. Every term was weighed for its linguistic integrity, ensuring it aligned with both technical precision and user comprehensibility.
This translation effort is more than a linguistic project—it is a cultural and academic intervention. It supports the decolonization of digital tools by making them more inclusive of global linguistic diversity. The availability of Voyant Tools in Gujarati offers researchers, educators, and students the opportunity to engage with computational methods in their native language, fostering deeper engagement with regional texts and literary traditions. It encourages the emergence of vernacular digital humanities as a robust scholarly practice.
In conclusion, the integration of Gujarati into Voyant Tools stands as a landmark achievement in the pursuit of inclusive digital scholarship. It opens new avenues for applying computational approaches to Gujarati literature, catalyses innovation in regional-language pedagogy, and reinforces the global relevance of local knowledge systems. Far from being a mere act of translation, this initiative exemplifies how technology can serve as a bridge between tradition and modernity, between regional voices and global academic dialogue.