Translation
Patent translation faces the same cost pressures as every other sector. However, cost pressure does not mean tolerance for errors. In patent translation, inaccuracies can have serious legal and financial consequences—from rejected applications to invalidated claims. Trading off between cost competitiveness and quality is therefore not an option. So what’s the solution?
Neural machine translation has successfully reduced costs in the intellectual property translation sector. At ASTW, we use a machine translation system that is continuously retrained with newly translated texts. The output quality naturally improves over time as the system learns from domain-specific terminology, legal phraseology, and the technical language characteristic of patent documents.
Machine-translated texts are reviewed by linguists specialized in intellectual property, but the degree and intensity of post-editing varies—sometimes significantly—from text to text. This is because machine translation handles familiar subject matter well, but not in all cases. Technical fields with established terminology benefit most from automated translation, while emerging technologies or highly specialized inventions may require more extensive human intervention. An automated post-editing step using artificial intelligence would be valuable here. This would reduce the intensity of human post-editing and potentially decrease the risk of human error.
ASTW and Patent Translation Quality
At ASTW, we employ automated post-editing with an AI-based tool. The system, designed by IP-specialized linguists and trained with validated prompts, is not intended to eliminate human post-editing but to enable linguists to perform higher-quality work in less time. The AI handles systematic corrections—ensuring consistent terminology, detecting formatting errors, and identifying potential ambiguities—before the text reaches the human expert.
This approach allows our linguists to focus on what they do best: understanding complex technical concepts, ensuring legal precision, and making nuanced decisions that require professional judgment. The result is a more efficient workflow that reduces costs while, more importantly, ensuring consistently high final quality.
Our hybrid model combines the speed and cost-efficiency of neural machine translation with the reliability of AI-assisted post-editing and the irreplaceable expertise of specialized human linguists. This multi-layered approach represents the current state of the art in patent translation, delivering the accuracy your intellectual property deserves without compromising on turnaround time or budget.
If you would like to learn more about our translation solutions for the intellectual property sector, contact us here
