KOCHI: Making a major stride, the Kerala High Court has started providing Malayalam translation of judgments. Coinciding with the International Mother Language Day on Tuesday, translated versions of two judgments have been uploaded in the court’s website. No other high court in the country provides translation of judgments in regional languages.
The project is in its pilot stage. It will take two to three years for a full-fledged service, said HC officials. The Malayalam version of judgments can be accessed by searching the ‘case status’ using the case number, party name, advocate name, etc on the HC’s official website, hckerala.gov.in. The Malayalam version is uploaded just below the English version.
G Gopakumar, Director, IT, Kerala High Court told TNIE the Supreme Court had developed a dedicated open-source judicial domain language translation tool named SUVAS (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software) to translate judicial documents from English to nine vernacular languages — Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Malayalam and Bengali — and vice versa. “Kerala High Court is translating the judgment using SUVAS which is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based tool,” he said.
The process began two years ago using AI which only had 10 to 15% accuracy. Now, the accuracy level has increased to 40%.
The rest is done manually. “Currently translated version of ‘reportable judgments’ have been uploaded. All judgments and interim orders will be uploaded later,” Gopakumar said.
Welcoming the development, Advocate T Naveen, secretary, Kerala High Court Advocates’ Association, said, “This shows the justice delivery system is becoming more accessible for the common man. Providing HC’s decisions in the mother tongue will help the public to grasp the judgments.”