Re: Machine Translations of World Patent Applications in

Andy Berks (BERKSA@war.wyeth.com)
Mon, 26 Apr 1999 09:16:50 -0400

As far as I am aware, there is no machine translation of PCT Japanese language documents. This is because the JP patents are all published in an electronic format, using a kind of ascii code for the Japanese characters (which has something like 2000 characters) - so the translation engines don't have to guess about what character is being input. The PCT documents are all paper only. Unfortunately, there is apparently no OCR to convert Japanese characters to the code needed for input into the translation engines.

Therefore, translations of PCT Japanese language documents at this time requires conventional manual translations. There are lots of places that do this kind of work. We use Corporate Translations, 860-450-0405.

A few points that I tell my friends before they go out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars of manual JP translations:
- order the original document and inspect it. You may find that a lot of information is interpretable. You may also be able to limit the sections of the document that need translating.
- Get the Derwent Documentation Abstract. The doc abstract may have a lot of detail.
- A JP equivalent may be available for a JP PCT - it would appear in a Derwent patent family with the W kind code. The JP can be machine translated.

Andy Berks
Wyeth Ayerst

>>> "Smith, Sandra" <Sandra.Smith@wl.com> 4/24/99 11:36:15 AM >>>
Does anyone know of a service that provides machine translations of
World Patent Applications written in Japanese? If not, are there any
recommendations for a regular translation service for these documents?

Sandy Smith
Knowledge Management Services
Warner Lambert Parke Davis
(734)-622-7480 (phone)
(734)-622-4569 (fax)
sandra.smith@wl.com