Ayodhya hearing: Over 11,000 pages need to be translated into English

Over 11,000 pages of documents, mostly deposition of witnesses in Hindi, need to be translated into English, a task that would require 120 working days, for the Supreme Court hearing in the Ayodhya land dispute matter.

As per the information provided by the Supreme Court's Secretary General to a five member constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the record for the court's perusal consists of a total of 38,147 pages in multiple languages including Persian, Sanskrit and Arabic, stored in 15 trunks.

Of the total pages, 12, 14 pages are in Hindi including 10,907 pages of deposition of witnesses, 18,607 pages in English, 501 pages in Urdu, 97 pages in Gurumukhi, 21 pages in Sanskrit and 86 pages in other languages.

A total of 1,729 pages are in combination of more than one language that include Hindi, English, Urdu, Sanskrit and Gurumukhi.

The Supreme Court Registry said that if its entire strength of 8 official translators is utilised to translate the 11,479 pages, "it is likely to take about 120 working days to make the case ready for hearing".

"If 16 translators (8 official translators of Supreme Court and 8 engaged from other sources) are deputed, the translation will be completed in about 60 working days," it said.

The bench, posted the matter for hearing after eight weeks and directed its registry to provide translated copies of documents to the parties within six weeks.

--IANS

and/vd