The online translator app lists Mansi as its first indigenous Northern language. Its search engine allows users to translate texts from the Mansi language into over 100 languages, the Yandex press service reports.

To launch the new language, data collected by the Ob – Yugric Institute of Applied Research and Development jointly with the Yugra Research and Development Institute of Information Technologies were used.

“Yandex continues to develop a project to preserve languages of the Russian Federation’s peoples together with the House of the Peoples of Russia with the support of the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs. Initially, the online translator offered seven languages of the peoples of Russia, while their number has already reached 18,” the company reported.

Mansi or Mansiitsy, known as Voguls in the past, are a small Finnish-Ugric nation in Russia’s Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area – Yugra. Almost 3,000 people speak the Mansi language.