Patent Translation for Filing and Litigation

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Warren Smith

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Jul 31, 2025, 12:35:08 PMJul 31
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My transition to practicing patent law is STILL is not paying nearly as much as I was earning as a translator. Quite frustrating, actually.

 

I thought I would give a heads-up to my colleagues here about a case that just crossed my desk this morning.

 

I just had a patent application (translated by the applicant in Japan in Japan) rejected by the USPTO because, in the translation of the PCT application, the claims were numbered 1, 2, 3, ... instead of [Claim 1], [Claim 2], ... as they were in the original Japanese-language PCT original.

 

I may try to push back on the Office (because the translator followed the US convention for numbering the claims, rather than the Japanese convention), but handling this is still taking attorney time, and the USPTO also wants us to pay a penalty for submitting the "corrected translation" after a specific deadline passed.

 

The bottom line is that, as translators, we need to remember that we need to be very literal in our translations for filing and litigation, even in cases like this where it seems ridiculous to be so, and it is not always a value-adding service to translate into the "US style" when we render translations.

 

Warren Smith

Bill Lise

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Jul 31, 2025, 4:18:39 PMJul 31
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“My transition to practicing patent law is STILL is not paying nearly as much as I was earning as a translator. Quite frustrating, actually.”
Does that mean as much as you were earning before MTPE or even after MTPE destroyed the ending potential of patent translation?
I ask because I myself have translated almost no patent specifications in the last two years, although other translation work comes in.
Interpreting is still alive, but not for patent-related depositions. The problem with depositions is that, with much of it moving online after 2021, there is really no advantage for an interpreter to be in Japan.
Bill
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Warren Smith

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Jul 31, 2025, 4:30:14 PMJul 31
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From my side of the divide (now on the potential client side), I see nearly all translation for application from Japan being handled in-house by the big law firms in Japan, and machine translation handling nearly all translation work for all the US law firms I have spoken with.

 

I still do a but of translation (as a side gig) for litigation, where they need to have a sworn translation by a translator who can defend the translation in a deposition or appear in court, but the volume is very low.

 

Warren

 

Bill Lise

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Jul 31, 2025, 4:36:19 PMJul 31
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That makes sense. Translation for outbound filing has long been an important business activity of Japanese patent firms. My guess is that a significant amount of that is being done by AI with post-editing, and I heard predictions of that from two benrishi I know at a JPAA event just before the pandemic.
On another front, an old Japanese attorney client tells me that a significant number of Japanese law firms are having tasks formerly performed by associates done by AI. 
Bill

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Warren Smith

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Jul 31, 2025, 4:47:09 PMJul 31
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Yes.

 

I spoke with the in-house attorney for SanDisk the other day (who took my call as a courtesy due to a couple of dimensions of affinity), and he told me that the supply of qualified patent attorneys/agents outstrips the need. I think this will only get worse.

 

I spoke in a JPAA event last April, showing a graph of how while patent filings are increasing by 2 - 3%/year, efficiencies produced by AI are growing far faster than that, while is likely to going to have the same effect on patent attorneys as AI has had on patent translators. No one even commented. I think the entire room was deep in denial.

 

W

Bill Lise

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Jul 31, 2025, 4:50:55 PMJul 31
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Denial is a serious problem faced by translators as well. It inhibits them from making useful decisions about what to do. Chanting “AI will not replace us” will not stop AI from replacing you.
Bill

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Bill Lise

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Jul 31, 2025, 5:44:01 PMJul 31
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The population of JA-EN translators is excessive, relative to the already small and rapidly decreasing demand, and yet it is likely that universities are exasperating the problem by continuing to churn out translator wannabes,  a significant number of whom these days are probably attracted to Japanese popular culture, a very attractive field that, because of its popularity, has fierce competition and low rates. 

Translation organizations are also not doing a service to their members by encouraging or at least not discouraging the misconception that  the cultural aspects of translation will keep the AI wolf from translator doors. The wolf arrived some time ago and is enjoying your lunch.

Worse, we still hear people suggesting that adopting AI is a useful strategy, with convenient ignorance of the continuing need to have clients that are not using AI themselves. 

Few people have addressed the reality that the vast majority of translation work has nothing to do with culture, but cultural nuance is often used as a reason for humans not being replaceable.

Patents? No culture.

An agreement to install a solar energy facility? No culture.

A description of a system to implement electronic signatures? No culture.

Safety regulations for a production line? No culture.

And just about everything other than the small literary and entertainment sectors that gets JA-EN translated: No culture. 

The cultural nuance replacement-denial strategy fails miserably.

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John Stroman

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Aug 1, 2025, 6:39:34 AMAug 1
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Warren and Bill,

Very interesting information.

The following is a copy/paste from the weekly Slator newsletter. The links to Slator are to a subscriber only article, but here's the gist from the newsletter. The last sentence is particularly revealing.

I still contend that the only evolutionary advantage of Homo sapiens is our capacity to adapt to change. We need to capitalize on that advantage.
*****
 

Gluers of Tasks

Every day we scan the research-verse for papers that may be of interest to the language industry. A new language model here, a better AI mousetrap there. Separating what’s of purely academic interest from what’s relevant to businesses is no easy task.

But when Microsoft researchers publish a list of the 40 occupations with the highest “AI applicability score” that puts “Interpreters and Translators” at the very top, we dive deep.

The researchers examined how people use Microsoft Copilot “in the wild”. They studied 200,000 conversations between people and the AI to a) find out what tasks people ask the AI to help them with, b) what tasks the AI itself actually performs, c) how successfully these tasks are done. They then mapped each conversation to a list of common work activities based on a US job database called O*NET and proceeded to calculate an “AI applicability score” for each occupation. Still with me?

Ok, so a high score means high risk of AI replacement? Not necessarily, the researchers say. It depends on how businesses choose to use AI to either automate or augment work activities. 

They acknowledged that decomposing a job into its work activities does not provide a full representation of every job because “the connecting glue between tasks also contributes to the value of work.” 

Human workers as glue. Here’s your analogy for the weekend.

Overall, the implications of the paper for the language industry boil down to the familiar and to what the industry has been adapting to for years: jobs shift to even more specialized roles and almost all translation work will be AI review.
*****
John Stroman

Bill Lise

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Aug 1, 2025, 6:59:53 AMAug 1
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It looks like large amounts of translation jobs are already shifting to AI review, and that turns the job of a translator into a low-paying non-translation job. 
The idea of us adapting or capitalizing on the human advantage of is fine, as long as we realize that doing that is not going to involve dealing with intermediaries. That model is quickly going away. What advantage is there for an agency that can use AI themselves to purchase a translation from a translator who uses AI?
And if “adapt” means agreeing to do post-editing, that needs to come with the realization that the agencies will pay post-editors “enough,” where enough is enough that they agree to post-edit. That makes the success of the MTPE business model reliant on a sufficient supply of translators to work very cheaply doing post-editing. Will that supply be available? It seems it is available, because freelance translators are mostly not able to break away from agencies by competing with them for direct clients. 
I think this business model will work for agencies and their clients for quite some time, particularly when you consider that people are still entering translation, some not still harboring of the notion that there is a career waiting for them. 
The universities are apparently not letting them in on the bad news, and the translation organizations are also looking away. In the case of organizations with corporate members, I think that is understandable. 
Bill
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John Stroman

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Aug 2, 2025, 4:17:12 PMAug 2
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Bill,

As always, thank you for your incisive comments. 

By "adapt" I simply meant that when the situation changes, we need to explore new avenues of generating income by utilizing the skills and knowledge we already have. We need not limit ourselves to following a business model that used to be relatively stable since before I went freelance in 1989. Although my main work has been and remains translating for an agency because it gives me control over my workload, in the past I have: taught English to Japanese adults and taught Japanese to American adults at a 2-year college; taught freshman writing at two universities (after all, translation requires writing skill); worked as a technician in a research laboratory (undergraduate degree in chemistry); worked as a proofreader and copy editor for a professional archaeology journal (archaeology is my hobby), and so on. I have also translated for direct customers (pharmaceutical companies in Japan and in the US), and worked as an on-call interpreter for the State of Ohio, but only for short durations.

I think Warren was "adapting" by choosing a different path that enabled him to utilize the skills he has developed so well over the years. Although it may not be as lucrative as his former role, I think Warren made a wise decision under the present circumstances, and it may become more lucrative as his reputation grows. 

When things that are beyond our control change unexpectedly, that's about all we can do. Take stock of what we are able and willing to do to earn a living, and find another way.

John Stroman
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Bill Lise

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Aug 2, 2025, 6:37:23 PMAug 2
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Thank you, John. 
My comments were also in response to what I’ve seen so far from translators hoping to ride out the AI storm by agreeing to do low-paid post-editing or using AI themselves, with no ideas on how to find clients to replace agencies.
I think neither of those paths is realistic, although translators who have (or think they have) no other options might chose one of those. 
I know people who are building new careers, people who have stayed on to do post-editing, and those who have just retired. 
I myself am close enough to the end of my career to not worry much. 
My other activity, interpreting, was formerly mostly deposition interpreting in the Tokyo US embassy or consulate in Osaka. The pandemic put an end to that by first closing down the depo rooms in both places and then limiting the number of people who could be in the depo room. Then two of the three rooms (in Osaka) closed, leaving only Tokyo, which might still have restrictions. The restrictions meant that the interpreter would often be online, meaning that the advantage of being in Japan went away.
But there is other interpreting I do (three online assignments next week and one full day in Tokyo for the same UK client), and I think interpreting in general will last until long after translation is declared totally dead for most people. 
Bill
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