PREFACE
The Constituent Assembly of India had by resolution authorised me to publish under my authority a Hindi Translation of the Constitution by the 26th January 1950, and translations of the Constitution in other languages as soon afterwards as I could arrange. I felt it desirable that in the translations of the Constitution in the different languages of India the same equivalents, if possible, should be used for the English terms of legal and constitutional import that occur in that document. I, therefore, called a conference of language experts to evolve as far as possible a common terminology which could be used for the translations of the Constitution in the various languages and ultimately also in all official administrative, legal and judicial work of the country. It met under the Chairmanship of the Honourable Shri Ghanshyam Singh Gupta, Speaker, Central Provinces' Assembly. It had on it representatives of all the languages specified in the Eighth Schedule. The Conference prepared a glossary of the terms used in the Constitution and the Expert Translation Committee which had been entrusted with the work of translating Constitution in Hindi has made use of these terms alone in preparing this translation.
Some of the terms used in this translation of the Constitution may appear at present to be rather new to some people. But it must be remembered that these terms have been found to be acceptable to the majority of the languages of India and as such will either command today or in the near future the greatest measure of intelligibility. Some words may also be found to be used in a sense in which they are not ordinarily used in Hindi. Thus the word jamin has been used to indicate 'bail' whereas its ordinary significance in Hindi is the person who offers 'bail' ". But this difference in the meaning of the term has been found to be necessary because the term jamin is used for 'bail' in the majority of the Indian languages. Some of the new terms that may be found in the translation of the Constitution have come in as a result of the decision of the Language Conference which considered terms of different languages for the purpose of fixing equivalents of the English terms. The term pamcata, for example is used in Kashmiri language for 'award' and it was found to be acceptable to the members of the Conference and consequently the term 'award' has been translated in this translation as pamcata. It may be hoped that the terms used in this translation would become the standard Hindi terms for official use when Hindi begins to be used for official purposes in the Union and the States.
NEW DELHI:
