Who Has Skin in the Patent Translation Game?
By Maria Eliseeva
Intellectual Property,
May 2021
The art of translation is a specific professional skill that transforms information in one language environment into another language and its language traditions. The ultimate quality of the translation is determined by how well it preserves and conveys the meaning and unique features of the original text. Machine translation systems and tools aid an experienced translator in various ways; however, machine translation and post machine translation editing are at best an imitation of preparing a translation. In a legal document such as a patent or patent application, even the 99 percent accuracy of the translation very often might mean that it is 100 percent incorrect. It also means that whatever the entire investment was in protecting an applicant’s patent rights in that jurisdiction was possibly wasted.
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