Kerala High Court Commences Publishing Judgments In Malayalam

The Kerala High Court has started publishing judgments translated to Malayalam language on test basis.

In an unprecedented step, two judgments of the Division Bench comprising the Chief Justice S. Manikumar and Justice Shaji P. Chaly in WA 1638/2022, and WA 926/2016, have been made available in Malayalam language, on the High Court website. 

With this initiative, Kerala High Court has become the first High Court to commence publication of decisions in its regional language, as well. 

It is noted that the Apex Court had set up an Artificial Intelligence committee at the national level to implement the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Courts of India to enhance the efficiency of the Justice Delivery System. ‘SUVAS’ (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuwad Software) was thus developed under the auspices of the Supreme Court of India for the translation of Judicial Documents and has been proposed to use translation of judgements into vernacular languages. The project is monitored by Justice Abhay.S. Oka, Judge, Supreme Court of India. In the Kerala High Court, Justice A. Muhamed Mustaque and Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V. are the members of the Artificial Intelligence Assisted Legal Translation Advisory Committee, which has been steering the implementation of the project. It is using this AI Tool that the Kerala High Court has translated the said decisions. 

Last month, in January 2023, the Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud had said that the judgments of the Apex Court would be translated to four languages, namely, Hindi, Gujarati, Odia, and Tamil, on noting that the English language in its “legal avatar” was not comprehensible to 99.9% of Indian citizens. 

"A very important initiative which we have adopted recently, is our initiative for translation of the judgments of the Supreme Court in regional languages. Because we must understand that the language which we use namely English, is a language which is not comprehensible, particularly in its legal avatar, to 99.9% of our citizens, in which case really access to justice cannot be meaningful, unless citizens are able to access and understand in a language which they speak and comprehend, the judgments which we deliver whether in the high courts or in the Supreme Court", the CJI had said. 

The Apex Court had also proposed to release 1,268 of its judgments in 13 Indian languages on Republic Day this year. Of those, 1,091 judgments had been translated to Hindi, 21 to Odia, 14 to Marathi, 4 to Assamese, 1 to Garo, 17 to Kannada, 1 to Khasi, 29 to Malayalam, three to Nepali, 4 to Punjabi, 52 to Tamil, 28 to Telugu and 3 to Urdu. 

The proposal for the same had initially been mooted by the former President Ram Nath Kovind, who stated that a a system could be evolved whereby certified translated copies of judgements would be made available in the local or regional language. "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", the former Indian President had emphasized. He had further suggested that the certified translated copies of judgments could be made available within 24 or 36 hours after the pronouncement of the judgment. 

The proposal had been mulled by the Apex Court in 2019, under the aegis of the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi, and had decided to translate judgments to six vernacular languages, namely, Assamese, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu. The indigenously developed software by the electronic software wing of the Supreme Court had also been cleared by the then CJI Gogoi.

By July 2019, the Apex Court had started uploading judgments in regional languages, in a separate tab titled 'Vernacular Judgments' on the Supreme Court portal. The judgments of a case originating from a particular state was seen translated to the language of that state, and translated judgments in six vernacular languages were seen to be made available. By 2020, some more judgments in Malayalam, Tamil, and Hindi, were also seen to be made available. 

The High Court of Kerala through its initiative has thus moved towards increased accessibility with respect to the dissemination of judicial information. 

Click Here To Read/Download The Malayalam Version Of The Judgment In WA 1638 of 2022

Click Here To Read/Download The Malayalam Version Of The Judgment In WA 926 of 2016