Transeuro had a booth at the Patent Information Fair and Conference from November 6 to November 8. It was our second time participating in the fair and from our experience, we felt that the patent translation industry will keep growing. Looking back, we believe that the value of participation far exceeded the cost.

We will elaborate on our experiences further with some concrete examples.

80% of the attendees of our company presentation were from IP departments

 As we had announced on our homepage our CEO did a presentation with the title “Translating Technical Terms Unique to German: Don’t Lose Out in a Big Way by Not Knowing the Different Concepts Between Japanese and German”. 80% of the attendees were from IP departments or other related departments. We believe that many attended because they are not satisfied with their current translation provider. Initially, we assumed that rival translation providers would attend, but it was mostly prospective clients.

This shows that members of IP departments do care more about the “definition of technical terms” and “the difference of technical concepts” than translation providers.

A lot of visitors were surprised that we don’t use machine translation

At transeuro we do not use machine translation of any kind. The whole translation process is carried out by veteran translators and the translation is checked by checkers that were trained in-house.

Some visitors lost interest once they heard that we do not use machine translation, but far more visitors stopped by because they were interested in a company that does not use machine translation. The majority of these visitors were IP department members and also a few patent attorneys. Here the current issue of the patent translation industry becomes apparent. The clients have doubts about translation providers that use machine translation, however, translation providers want to use machine translation for various reasons. Supply and demand do not go well together.

The quality level of outsourced translation is not consistent

 A lot of visitors told us that the quality of their current translation providers varies a lot. The clients of translation providers, members of IP departments and patent attorneys, were more aware of the problem with patent translation quality than the actual translation providers.

Translation providers and clients might think that by using machine translation accuracy will increase, careless mistakes will decrease, translation speed will increase, and the quality will be consistent. However, the main reason why translation providers use machine translation is to lower the rate they pay the translator and to increase their profits.

Is this really an environment that will create high-quality translation?

Is there really a cheap, fast translation service provider with consistent quality?

Cost is relative so we don’t want to talk about when something is considered cheap.

But how is translation quality evaluated? The translation industry has a guideline on how to evaluate quality, but it focuses on careless mistakes, incorrect translation of technical terms and incomplete translations. We believe that a correct and complete translation is the absolute minimum.

In a legal field like patent translation where texts about new technologies that are not yet published need to be translated, we see a translation without mistakes and mistranslations as the starting point. Our translations go beyond that.

An important standard for patent translation – Is the technical concept really translated as in the original?

When we hire full-time, freelance or part-time translators we ask the applicants to do a trial translation. Even though we receive applications of experienced patent translators we often receive results that give us the impression that the applicant did not understand the technical concept correctly.

If you receive such a translation that is not the fault of the translator but rather the fault of a translation provider that enters a contract with such a translator and entrusts them with work without proper training. When the translator receives no feedback from the translation provider they will not improve. As a fellow translation provider, we feel sorry for those translators.

High quality translation service providers are on the rise

As you can see from the above points even in light of the unclear future of the patent translation industry, we think that high-quality translation service providers that can understand a technical concept thoroughly and keep a constant high-quality level will grow.

We talked relatively negative about machine translation so far. The truth is we believe that only translators with skills that surpass machine translation will be able to coexist with machine translation. Otherwise, they won’t realize the mistakes of the machine. Also, normally you wouldn’t give guidance to someone with higher skills than yourself, would you?

Now it is important for translation providers that maintain a high-quality level that professional translators will put their energy in educating their human successors.

At transeuro we seriously think about what high-quality patent translation is. Our translators are very disciplined in honing their translation skills day by day. Try our services and see for yourself.

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