Mohd Eusoff Bin Chin SCJ:

We dismissed this appeal on 13 December 1993 and we now give the grounds for doing so.

The appellant alleged that the respondent had compiled, published, printed, distributed and sold telephone directories in the Chinese language entitled "Malaysian Business Chinese Directory", and that the respondent in doing so had obtained or copied substantially from telephone directories published by the appellant without first obtaining the permission or authority of the appellant. The appellant sought an injunction from the Court to restrain the respondent from printing the Chinese telephone directories and for damages to be assessed. On 21 September 1991 the Court granted an interim injunction pending trial. The respondent's application to set aside the interim injunction was rejected by the Court on 23 December 1991. On 25 June 1993, after a full trial, the High Court dismissed the plaintiff's claim with costs. The appellant appealed to the Supreme Court.

What we are mainly concerned with here is whether the book Exh. P7 entitled "Malaysian Business Chinese Directory" is in fact a telephone directory. Under s. 44 of the Telecommunications Amendment Act 1977 a "telephone directory" means " the book containing the alphabetical list of telephone subscribers' names and addresses". What is "alphabetical list" is not defined in the Act. The learned Judge of the High Court in his judgment has held that the "Malaysian Business Chinese Directory" is not a telephone directory because it has not been proved to contain the names of telephone subscribers in an alphabetical order. We agree with his finding on this point.

It was argued by the learned Counsel for the appellant that the impugned directory being in the Chinese language could not be arranged in alphabetical order because Chinese characters do not contain alphabets but depends on the number of strokes, and identification is by counting the number of strokes. He argued that the Court should accept the impugned directory as an exhibit without its having to be translated from Chinese into Bahasa Kebangsaan since the appellant's Chinese language expert Dr Tang Eng Teik in his evidence stated that it is not possible to translate a Chinese name into romanised Malay writing. This is because when written in Chinese characters, the surname 'Tang' is pronounced as 'Chin' in Hakka, as 'Tan' in Hokkien, as 'Chan' in Cantonese and as 'Teng' in Fuchow.

Lee Sok Peng had, when giving evidence for the respondent, said that the "Malaysian Business Chinese Directory" was written in Mandarin. It was, therefore, submitted by the learned Counsel for the respondent that a translation into Bahasa Kebangsaan could have been made by following only the Mandarin pronunciation. From the appeal record, we note that he had also submitted in the High Court that the impugned directory should not have been admitted in evidence because it had not been translated into Bahasa Kebangsaan as required by O. 92 r. 1 of the Rules of the High Court 1980 which states:

1. Any document required for use in pursuance of these rules shall be in the national language, and may be accompanied by a translation thereof in the English language:

Provided that any document in the English language may be used as an exhibit, with or without a translation thereof in the national language.

The learned Counsel for the respondent repeated before us his earlier submission in the High Court that the book "Malaysian Business Chinese Directory" should not have been admitted as an exhibit because it had not been translated into the National language. He stressed that O. 92, r. 1 of the Rules of the High Court 1980, uses the word "shall be in the national language" and therefore it is a mandatory requirement.

In this case the book "Malaysian Business Chinese Directory" is in Chinese writing. Witnesses told the Court that it contains a list of businesses and trade names together with their telephone numbers. The l