This presentation discusses several aspects of patent translation as seen from a patent attorney’s perspective. Some of the topics discussed are:
- What could possibly go wrong? - Effects of mistranslations on the life of a patent
- Dispelling patent translation myths
- What's important in patent translation - and what isn't
- Typical trouble areas: clarity and new matter
- How to deal with ambiguity
- How to judge the accuracy of a translation, or, how far can you stray from the original?
The examples given cover typical problems in patent translation (from Japanese to English), but should be equally accessible to translators of other fields as well.
About the Speaker:
Friedemann Horn is a German and European Patent Attorney based in Munich.
He started his career as an in-house translator for a Japanese patent law firm.
In the year 2000, he founded Horn & Uchida Patent Translations Ltd., a translation house located in Osaka that specializes in the translation of patent applications between Japanese and English.
In 2005, he returned to his native Germany, where he was registered as a German patent attorney in 2008 and as a European patent attorney in 2009.
Today, he divides his time between translation work at Horn & Uchida and patent prosecution at patent law firm Horn Kleimann Waitzhofer, where his main focus is on representing Japanese clients before the European Patent Office. This often involves fixing poor translations or dealing with their aftermath.