Will Patent Translation Disappear with the Rise of AI? How to Differentiate Between Human Translators and AI Translation

1. What is Patent Translation?

1.1 What is Patent Translation?

Patent translation refers to the task of converting various documents involved in the intellectual property cycle—from patent application, examination, and rights maintenance to license negotiations and infringement litigation—into different languages. It is a specialized field where the three elements of technology, law, and language intersect at a high level. The main translation targets include essential documents for the rights acquisition process (intellectual property cycle), such as the application document called the "patent specification," the "notice of reasons for rejection" issued by examiners, and documents to counter these, like "written opinions" and "amendments."

In priority claim applications based on the Paris Convention and domestic phase entry via the PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty), translators bear the dual responsibility of "accurately conveying technical content" and "complying with the laws of each country." The quality of the translation directly affects the cost of responding to subsequent office actions and the ultimate validity of the patent rights, requiring extremely precise translation of every single word.

>What is patent translation? Introducing necessary situations, parts that AI translation can handle, difficult parts, and recommended tools

1.2 Reasons Why Patent Translation Is Said to Disappear

With the improvement in the accuracy of AI translation, the nature of patent translation is undergoing significant changes. Amid the widespread adoption of AI across the translation industry, the notion that "translators will become unnecessary" in patent translation has emerged, partly because patent documents possess a "logical and consistent structure" that is well-suited for AI learning.

However, in practice, translators do not become unnecessary. On the contrary, translators with specialized knowledge and advanced translation skills are taking on the role of "post-editing" (human review and correction) after AI generation, creating a system that achieves both greater speed and accuracy than ever before.

2. Pros and Cons of Requesting a Translator

The advantages and disadvantages of requesting translation from a translator compared to AI translation are as follows.

●Benefits

・Top-level translation quality: Minimizes the risk of mistranslations and omissions, maintaining legal precision at an extremely high level.
・Meticulous expressions and terminology consistency: Not only maintains consistent terminology appropriate to the context but also accurately conveys subtle nuances.
・Handling of unknown technologies and new terms: Investigates the technical background and derives appropriate translations even for the latest technical terms and neologisms that AI struggles with.
・Advanced specialized knowledge: Thoroughly familiar with the unique description rules and formats specific to patent translations, including patent specifications, ensuring no practical deficiencies.
・Consideration of strategic intent and cultural background: Expected to provide translations that adjust expressions to capture the client's intent and take into account the legal regulations and cultural background of the target filing countries.

●Disadvantages

・Difficulty in securing qualified personnel: Senior translators specialized in patent translation are limited in number in the market, making it challenging to select and secure a suitable service provider.
・Speed constraints: Compared to AI translation, the processing speed is slower, and since all steps are performed manually, a corresponding lead time is required.
・Cost burden: Costs tend to be higher than when using AI, necessitating careful budget considerations.
・Quality variability: Since the quality depends on the individual translator’s experience and skills, there is a risk of inconsistency in the final output.
・Risk of information leakage: Outsourcing translation involves physical data exchanges, making it essential to implement measures against human errors and improper management that could lead to information leaks.

3. Pros and Cons of AI Translation for Patent Translation

The advantages and disadvantages of AI translation compared to requesting a professional translator are as follows.

●Benefits

・Fast and highly accurate translation: Thanks to advances in neural machine translation, practical-level translations can be generated in a short time.
・Continuous improvement in accuracy: Translation accuracy continues to evolve daily through the accumulation of training data and algorithm enhancements.
・Rapid handling of large volumes of documents: Even materials spanning thousands of pages can be processed in an extremely short period while maintaining consistent quality.
・Cost reduction: External costs can be suppressed compared to manual translation.

●Disadvantages

・Risk of mistranslation or omission: There is a possibility of critical errors occurring in documents with legal effect.
・Inconsistency in terminology: Even within the same document, multiple translations may be used for the same term, posing a risk of terminology variation.
・Lack of adaptability to new terms: It is difficult to accurately translate the latest technical terms or new words that do not exist in the training data.
・Inability to distinguish synonyms: For Japanese words with similar meanings, it is not possible to appropriately differentiate usage according to the intent of the invention.
・Insufficient optimization for formatting: Often unable to output in accordance with the unique format and specific writing rules of patent specifications.
・Difficulty reflecting intent and background: Cannot capture the strategic intent of the client or the cultural background of the target country in the translation.
・Human review is essential: To compensate for the above shortcomings, final expert review (post-editing) is indispensable.

4. How to Differentiate Between Translator Requests and AI Translation

To streamline patent translation while maintaining quality, it is important not to rely solely on one method but to use and combine them appropriately according to the situation.

4.1 Aiming to Take the Best of Both

There are advantages and disadvantages to both requesting translators and using AI translation. The important thing is to avoid relying solely on one side and to combine the strengths of both. For example, it is recommended to maximize benefits by entrusting routine expressions to AI while having humans handle the judgment of technical fundamentals and legal expressions.

4.2 AI Translation + Post-Editing is the Best Strategy

In the current state of patent translation, the best workflow that satisfies speed, accuracy, and quality at a high level is to combine "AI translation" with "post-editing by senior patent translators." By using rapid machine translation as a base and having experts carefully review it, you can achieve efficiency and reliability that neither manual translation alone nor AI translation alone can reach.

4.3 Building an AI Translation Environment and Criteria for Outsourcing

First, it is effective to start by building a secure AI translation environment within the company and promoting in-house production. For routine research materials and translations for internal sharing, handling them in-house can achieve sufficient results. On the other hand, for important application documents directly related to rights acquisition or difficult cases that in-house resources cannot handle through post-editing, we recommend outsourcing to specialized companies without hesitation to ensure quality assurance.