Supreme Court to translate Judgments into native Indian Languages


The Supreme Court of India will soon translate its judgements into four Indian languages: #hindi , #Gujarati#Tamil, and #Odiya. Indeed a welcome step to ensure that the masses can understand the law of the land in their respective native language.

The apex court acknowledged that #judgements in English in its legal form are non-comprehensible to almost 99.9% of our citizens. That is a very courageous and bold acknowledgement, almost after 75 years of Independence.

I can imagine the impact at the grassroots level if the Hon’ble Supreme Court incorporates a citizen-centric vision in the administration of #justice. At times, for an ordinary citizen, the Justice dispensing system appears to be entirely alien. The number of closed doors is relatively higher than open doors at the apex court. Suppose the ordinary citizen is lucky enough to decide to reach at the apex court. In that case, procedural obstacles are enough to demotivate the citizen’s spirit to be heard by the apex court.

I sincerely believe that the Hon’ble Supreme Court needs to be more citizen sensitive. For instance, proceedings of the Supreme Court are conducted in English and require the litigants to provide English translations of the annexures relied upon by the litigants. Consequently, the translation work is highly voluminous, especially in criminal matters when the trial records are in a regional language.

Therefore, from the perspective of the translations, the Hon’ble Court must initiate to render citizen-centric solutions to lessen the burden of ordinary citizens, at least in criminal matters or for native citizens who can not understand English and come from economically weaker sections of society. Accordingly, the Hon’ble Supreme Court may dispense the requirements of translations for deserving citizens or invest in building systems that either minimise the translation works or eliminate the translation requirements from regional languages to English.

Firstly, the step of making available Supreme Court Judgements in English in eSCR and now, translating the Judgements into regional languages are progressive steps to renovate the apex court from the Hon’ble Supreme Court to Hon’ble Supreme Citizen Court.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court will soon organize a hackathon inviting suggestions from the various stakeholders as well as citizens of the country to bring solutions on board to build the existing justice delivery system more prompt and efficient.

The Linkein profile of the author of the post can be accessed at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/advocateankushmahajan/

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