Patent Translations and Machine Translation
Patent Document Translations
One of the major uses for corporate machine translation (MT) are patent document and trademark translations. Patent translations are often performed by the thousands using a MT product, such as Systran Enterprise language translation software. The ability to quickly and easily translate patents gives many multinational corporations an advantage in research and development of their products and services.
The Challenge
English is the predominant language currently utilized for patents but the demand for global patent information that is available in non-English speaking markets is rapidly increasing. Patents and trademarks can be extremely difficult to translate because they contain both legal terminology and industry specific technical information that can cover many different domains, from advanced scientific to medical, engineering, military, information technology and more.
Those requiring translation are usually simply searching patent databases for companies that are seeking competitive intelligence data or those who are providing global content in which case the patents need to be translated within 24 hours of publication. The vast amount of content that needs to be translated is an overwhelming task that is too time consuming for humans alone.
The Solution
Systran’s language conversion technology is already being utilized by companies that are involved in the patent translation industry. What’s more, since the development of their new hybrid translation engine that utilizes both conventional rule-based and statistical technology they are seeing a large increase in the number of companies that are embracing their cutting-edge technology.
Systran has long been the leader and developer of language conversion technology for over 40 years but now have risen to the challenge of producing high-quality near human results with their new training server. Using it allows you to create additional translation memories and dictionaries automatically from pre-existing corpora.
This next generation of technology gives you a highly customized language conversion engine that is well-suited for patent translations. Best of all the system is continually improving the quality while maintaining consistency through post editing and feedback from translators. Unlike other systems that rely solely on you having the data for a statistical model, Systran can deliver translated results instantly with the ability to improve those through creating additional statistical models. Built-in analysis tools will even give you the BLEU (Bilingual Evaluation Understudy) score rating for the accuracy or quality of the text after language conversion.
Why Use Machine Translation?
The advantages of MT today are vast. It allows your corporation to translate millions of patent documents in a relatively short time frame. In the past, this volume would be extremely costly and the time required would be measured in months even years. Today, the machine translator can do the job faster and provides a level of consistency that helps you manage your projects more efficiently. SYSTRAN includes prebuilt technical dictionaries in over 20 domains filled with industry specific terminology.
Powerful API and Dictionary Tools Make it Easy
MT allows you to translate large volumes of patents automatically utilizing a simple API programmed to bulk translate any data required. In addition, it gives you the capability to define terms and phrases which are specific to your industry and the patents which interest you. The ability to “train” the software through the use of custom dictionaries and translation memory tools gives you more accurate results. The usage of MT allows for industry terminology and language specific customization.
The Human Translator and Machine Patent Translation
While MT gives you a rough draft, a human translator is then able to step-in and assist in specific areas where it has failed to generate accurate enough results. Machine translation does not eliminate the need for human translators. However, it is a wonderful aid to the work that they perform. By first translating patents with software, and then having a human translator proof and edit and add to your software’s custom dictionaries for future automatic text reproductions, your corporation can reduce the high costs of translating over time.
In some cases software is the only viable solution to research millions of documents quickly, and narrow the search results for a human translator to then go through the resulting documents that have been flagged. Systran makes working with foreign languages a lot easier.
As you can see, solutions like the Systran Enterprise can save your corporation a lot of time and thousands of dollars in patent translation costs.
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