Karnataka High Court Launches Webpage Of Judgments Translated Into Kannada

Judgments of the Supreme Court of India and the Karnataka High Court are now available on the High Court website in Kannada language.

Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court, Prasanna B Varale on Tuesday launched a Webpage wherein the judgments translated to Kannada language are available.

The webpage was launched as part of the project of AI-Assisted translation of Judgments and Judicial records in Vernacular Language for improving access to Justice.

The Supreme Court of India, to enable and improve access to Justice for all in the regional language, has planned to make translated judgments available to citizens through various modes of communication inclusive of websites/Portals of respective High Courts.

In this direction, the Karnataka High Court took up the translation project with the help of in-house translators. The translated judgments are made available on the webpage of the High court website.

At present 28 judgments of the Supreme Court 169 of the Karnataka High Court are translated and uploaded in Kannada Language. They are available on the following web address:

Supreme Court Judgments: https://karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in/sci_judgments.php

High court Judgments: https://karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in/hck_judgments.php

The Supreme Court envisaged the project in order to improve access to Justice for all by reaching them in the language known to them and to overcome the language barrier.

In order to accomplish the said purpose, the Supreme court constituted a Central committee known as the ‘AI-Assisted Legal Translation Advisory Committee’ headed by Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka. Judge, Supreme Court of India, Justice Suraj Govindraj, Judge High Court of the Karnataka is a member of the said committee

At the State level, the High Court of Karnataka has also constituted a similar committee to accomplish the above objective. The committee members are Justice Krishna S Dixit and Justice C. M. Joshi.

Then President of India Ramnath Kovind, had in October 2017, had mooted this idea and had said that a system could be evolved whereby certified translated copies of judgement are made available by the High Courts in the local or regional language.

While speaking at the Valedictory Function of the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of High Court of Kerala, the president had said: "It is important to not only take justice to the people, but also to make it understandable to litigating parties in a language they know. High Courts deliver judgements in English, but we are a country of diverse languages. The litigant may not be conversant with English and the finer points of the judgement may escape him or her. The litigating parties will thus be dependent on the lawyer or another person to translate the judgement. This can add to time and cost."

"Perhaps a system could be evolved whereby certified translated copies of judgments are made available by the Honourable High Courts in the local or regional language. This could happen in a period of say 24 or 36 hours after the judgement is pronounced. The language could be Malayalam in the Honourable Kerala High Court or Hindi in the Honourable Patna High Court, as the case may be", he had further suggested.