P.A.H. 7 (REVISEDI
4000001
HONG KONG FRAMENT INFORMATION SERVICES
DAILY
INFORMATION BULLETIN
Thursday, July 6, 1972
MORE CHINESE TO BE USED IN LOWER COURTS
The law in Hong Kong is to be amended to allow wider use of Cantonese
in Magistrates' Courts and quasi-judicial bodies of comparable rank.
It will be left to the discretion of the presiding officer to decide
whether Cantonese, English or both, should be used in the spoken part of the
proceedings.
This and other recommendations made by the Chinese Language Committee
in its Third Report have been accepted in principle by the Government.
A government spokesman said today that according to judicial
statistics for the year 1969-70, more than 96 per cent of all the cases heard
in Hong Kong courts were dealt with in the Magistracies.
"The implementation of this recommendation is a significant step forward
in the use of Chinese in the courts," he said,
Other recommendations accepted in principle by the Government include
the following:
Explanatory booklets in Chinese of the more important ordinances should continue to be prepared and published;
A glossary of legal terms should be compiled in Chinese and English;
A list of titles together with a brief description of existing ordinances and subsidiary legislation should be prepared and published in Chinese;
/* Pleadings