Market intellegence (not good)

[Warren Smith]

Two quick data points worthy of reporting:

1. My law firm just received an invoice from our current Japanese patent counsel (the one we’re about to part ways with due to persistent overcharging in all areas, not just translation). They billed us 55 yen per word—plus a 12,000 yen “handling” fee—for sending us an English translation of an office action. Out of curiosity, I downloaded the machine translation directly from the JPO site (took about two minutes) and found it perfectly serviceable, and in some ways better than the translation provided by the NJS translator.
2. One of the firms from which we’ve been collecting general quotes for Japanese patent prosecution work—formerly a provider of reasonably priced human translations—just announced that, for U.S. clients at least, it now finds machine translation sufficient for office action responses. It will be offering machine translations of all JPO office actions for free going forward. (I assume this wouldn’t apply in litigation contexts—but still, a shift worth noting.)

Personally, I don’t use machine translation whatsoever in the small bit of professional translation work I still do; quality-checking and stylistic polishing take me longer than translating from scratch (given that I am pretty efficient at translation from scratch). But for routine communication with Japanese clients, I do find machine-drafted emails (regardless of the language) to be quite usable (albeit with the occasional correction needed).

Sigh…

I suspect it’s only a matter of time before machine IP assistants start crowding me out of this new career practicing law, as well.

Warren Smith

 

[Bill Lise]

Warren,

Thank you for this report. I am not surprised.

And as this is going on, countless translators still promote the comforting idea that they will not be replaced by AI, because AI is not as good as them. Translation organizations encourage them, at least passively and often actively, and people who recognize what is happening and have the temerity to suggest that things are coming to an end for freelance translators, of course not limited to latent translators, are accused of being merchants of doom and gloom. 

Bill Lise

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リゼ　ウィリアム

Bill Lise

wlise...@gmail.com

https://kirameki-translation.co.jp/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-lise/

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