Cover not available
Article published In:
FORUM
Vol. 15:1 (2017) ► pp.142–156

Linguistic evaluation of translation errors in Chinese–English machine translations of patent titles

| National Taiwan University

The title of an invention allows the reader to understand the significance of a patent claim, and the wording of the title recurs throughout the subsequent patent documentation. If the translation of the title is erroneous, the quality of the translation in other parts of the patent documentation also suffers. This research involved using linguistic evaluation to identify common translation errors in Chinese–English machine translations of patent titles and examine the quality of machine-translated patent titles. Special focus was placed on orthographic, morphological, lexical, semantic, and syntactic errors found in patent titles. We sought to answer the following questions: (1) What are the trends in the application of machine translation in the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO)? (2) How is the quality of machine translation controlled at TIPO? (3) What are common errors in machine-translated patent titles? Through analysis of our findings, it is possible to estimate the level of effort required from a posteditor following translation, and to suggest methods of improving machine translations of patent titles. This study also generates information applicable to the training of patent translators and posteditors.

Keywords: patent translation, machine translation, linguistic evaluation, error classification, postediting
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Development of MT at TIPO
    • 2.1Translation evaluation method at TIPO
    • 2.2Using linguistic error classification to evaluate MT output
  • 3.Research method and data collection
  • 4.Analysing patent translation quality from patent title translation errors
    • 4.1Orthographic errors
    • 4.2Morphological errors
    • 4.3Lexical errors
    • 4.4Semantic errors
    • 4.5Syntactic errors
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 4 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.15.1.08tsa
References
Cross, Martin
2007 “Literal Translation of Patents.” In The Patent Translator's Handbook, edited by Alison Carroll, 19–28. Virginia, USA: American Translators Association.Google Scholar
Dillinger, Mike, and Arle Lommel
2004 LISA Best Practice Guide – Implementing Machine Translation. edited by Rebecca Ray. Switzerland.Google Scholar
Farrús, Mireia, Marta R. Costa-jussà, Jos´e B. Mariño, and Jos´e A. R. Fonollosa
2010 “Linguistic-based evaluation criteria to identify statistical machine translation errors.” Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation, Saint-Raphael, France, May, 2010.Google Scholar
Hsu, Jiuan-An
2014 “Error Classification of Machine Translation A Corpus-based Study on Chinese-English Patent Translation.” Studies of Translation and Interpretation (18): 121–136.Google Scholar
Koehn, Phillip
2010 Statistical Machine Translation. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Kristopher A.
1998 “A Pretext for Writing: Prologues, Epilogues, and the Notion of Paratext.” SSRN eLibrary. DOI logo.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Sharon
2002 “Teaching Post-editing: A Proposal for Course Content.” Teaching Machine Translation – 6th International Workshop of the European Association for Machine Translation, Manchester, England, November 14–15.Google Scholar
Tager, Wolfgang
2011 “The sentence-aligned European patent corpus.” 15th Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation, Leuven, Belgium.Google Scholar
Tinsley, John, Andy Way, and Paraic Sheridan
2010 “PLuTO: MT for online patent translation.” AMTA 2010: the Ninth conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, Denver, Colorado, October 31–November 4, 2010.Google Scholar
TIPO
2005 Taipei.Google Scholar
2007 “Evaluation table.” Taipei, 07/09/2007.Google Scholar
2010 Corpora Optimizing Project for Machine Translation of Patent Specifications. Taipei: TIPO.Google Scholar
2012 “Announcement.” TIPO. [URL].
Tsai, Yvonne
2010 “Text Analysis of Patent Abstracts.” The Journal of Specialised Translation (13): 61–80.Google Scholar
USPTO
2012 Questions and Answers. edited by Document Translation Services. US: Office of Procurement.Google Scholar
資料服務組第一科
2011a 專利資料英譯原則說明. edited by 經濟部智慧財產局. 台北: 經濟部智慧財產局.Google Scholar
2011b 譯文審查表. edited by 經濟部智慧財產局. 台北: 經濟部智慧財產局.Google Scholar