Proper Translation Of Law Books & Judgments Into Tamil Necessary To Make It Official Court Language, Fasting Will Not Help: Madras High Court

Justice G Jayachandran remarked that people who were demanding to make Tamil the official language for communication and pleading in the court should start by helping to translate the court's judgments and orders into Tamil.

The court was hearing a plea by lawyers seeking permission to go on an indefinite fast demanding to make Tamil the official language of the court. The protest, according to the petitioners was to impress upon the Centre to forward Tamil Nadu government's proposal for use of Tamil in the High Court to the President directly without referring it to the Chief Justice of India.

While the court noted that it could not endorse such life-threatening agitations, the court directed the parties to come up with other ways of protest that could carry forward the cause. The court also said that if the lawyers were really keen on making Tamil the official language of the court, they should think of other productive ways like finding the exact translations of English legal terms, maxims and doctrines and using them to argue their cases in front of judges who were conversant with the language.

Pointing to the translation of judgments into regional languages by the Supreme Court, the court commented that the same was not near to perfection and sometimes did not give the correct translation of the words. The court thus pointed out that there was a need for a proper glossary and an English-Tamil dictionary which could help in translating legal books into vernacular language and pave way for introducing Tamil as the official language of the court.

Case Title: G Bhagavath Singh v The Commissioner of Police

Case No: WP 34716 of 2023