To reduce its reliance on state governments for translating Central legislation into Indian languages, the Union Law Ministry is advancing Artificial Intelligence (AI) for this purpose, aiming for deployment by December, sources told The Indian Express.
AI Translation Trials and Challenges
Senior officials from the Ministry revealed that a recent AI trial for translating laws achieved only about 40% accuracy. The Ministry, in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre, is working on enhancing this by incorporating words from the legal glossary in Hindi and other Indian languages into the AI system.
“The legal glossary is being fed into the software. We are expecting it to be ready by the end of the year, after which we can start using the AI to translate laws. Right now, we are dependent on the state governments to send us the translations,” a senior official explained.
While the Constitution lists 22 Indian languages in its Eighth Schedule, translations are likely to be available in 14 languages, including Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, Urdu, Punjabi, and Marathi, as not all are used in court proceedings, the official added.
Efforts and Progress
Despite ongoing trials, the AI’s current development stage has not yet produced usable results. The Ministry is using the legal glossary in Hindi and other Indian languages to train the AI, aiming for better outcomes soon.
These initiatives come as three new criminal laws took effect on July 1, although their official translations into Indian languages are still pending. Law Ministry sources mentioned that state governments were requested in March to translate and submit these laws for vetting, a process expected to take around six months. Some states have already sent drafts of the Bharatiya Sakshya (Second) Act, 2023, which is the new Evidence Act.
Supreme Court’s AI Translation Project
The Supreme Court has also adopted AI for translating its judgments. Since the project’s inception in 2019, AI translation tools have translated 31,184 judgments into 16 languages as of December 2, 2023, according to a statement by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal in the Lok Sabha in February.
Constitutional Provisions
Under Article 348 of the Constitution, all proceedings of the Supreme Court and High Courts and authoritative texts of Bills introduced and passed by Parliament or any state legislature must be in English, unless the Governor of a state, with the President’s prior consent, authorizes the use of Hindi or any other official state language.
The Law Ministry’s efforts to develop AI for translating laws aim to streamline the process, reduce dependency on state governments, and ensure timely and accurate translations across multiple Indian languages.
