If you are concerned about the quality of the translations provided by your foreign associates or translation provider, one way to check for accuracy is to ask a company like Morningside to perform a back translation. What is a back translation? It’s the process of translating a document that has already been translated into a foreign language back into the original language. The two documents are then compared and reviewed for accuracy. To manage costs, you can have a back translation performed only on the claims. It makes sense to have back translations performed on several claim sets to get a broad picture of the translation quality your current vendor is providing. Questions about back translations? Call Morningside and we will be glad to help.

The obvious solution is an EU patent that would be legally binding in all EU member states, and require minimal or no translation. That has long been a dream of European officials, but disagreements about language and other issues have prevented the EU patent from coming into being.

Now the European Commission is proposing a compromise that would allow European patents to be submitted to the EPO in just one of the office’s official languages – French, German, or English. The claims would still have to be translated into the other two languages, which is line with the current reality. In case of litigation, the patent holder would have to provide a full translation into the language where the infringement process is taking place. Most patent applications in Europe are already filed in English, and French and German are the next most common languages, so the time and cost of translating patents for Europe would be drastically reduced.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like this regulation is going to pass anytime soon. Spain and Italy are strongly opposed to having their languages dropped, and several other European countries are also against it. EU officials predict heated discussions in the coming months as they seek a compromise solution that all 27 EU members are willing to sign up for. Morningside will continue monitoring the situation and update our readers on developments.

This is referred to in the translation industry as text expansion and contraction. In other words, the number of words in a document usually increases or decreases when the document is translated. While we can’t give an exact prediction of the final word count, translation companies use ratios based on typical expansion/contraction rates for different languages pairs. For example, in English to German translation, the word count typically contracts by 20%, and therefore this is the ratio that most companies use. If you have ever seen a German compound word like Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze (Danube steamboat shipping company Captain’s hat) you’ll understand why.

Calculating expansion or contraction during translation is not an exact science. Depending on subject matter and terminology, and also the quality of the writing, the text may expand more or less than the ratios predict. That is a major reason why Morningside—and most translation companies—provide the estimated cost, and not the exact cost for translating a document. But Morningside always utilizes the most conservative ratio when providing estimates to avoid any unpleasant surprises when the invoice arrives. Because of this, the actual cost for getting a document translated by Morningside is often lower than our estimated cost.

Suri Cruise, the daughter of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, became the poster child for name picks with unintended meanings. In 2006, the couple said that they chose the name in part because Suri means “princess” in Hebrew, but this was disputed. In other languages, Suri’s meaning proved less flattering. In Japanese, Suri means “pickpocket.” In French it means “turned sour,” and in an Indian dialect it means “pointy nose.” Perhaps a less than ideal name then for the daughter of international stars who frequently travel the globe.

Today Translations’ new service would prevent celebrity couples and regular folk from picking names with negative associations in foreign languages. This may seem trivial, but in our increasingly globalized world, your child may thank you down the road if they end up living in Europe or doing a semester abroad.  As Jurga Zilinskiene, the company’s chief executive said, “at the end of the day, it’s something a person has to live with for the rest of their lives.”

Morningside does not yet offer a baby names translation service, but if any of our clients are debating baby names at home and would like an outside opinion, feel free to try a few out on us. We promise to give each name a thumbs up or thumbs down vote, and we are glad to offer this service absolutely free.

As one of the most important legal technology events of the year, the conference was a huge success in introducing Morningside’s legal translation services, interpreting services, transcription and multimedia services to the legal community at large.  We were able to showcase our top service and quality as a translation company specializing in legal translations and patent translations.  Many attendees who were fortunate enough to swing by Morningside’s booth were surprised to see the piles and piles of candy and free giveaways that were offered.  One lucky winner was even awarded an iPod Touch at the end of the three-day conference.

Morningside is a global leader in the legal and technical translations industry, and as we are expanding our scope of legal translations services and technical translation solutions, we were proud to have attended LegalTech and look forward to making it a permanent installation on our calendar in coming years.  If you missed us this year, come see us next year at LegalTech 2011!

To learn more about Morningside’s legal translations, patent translations, interpretations, and multimedia services, please visit us at www.morningtrans.com.

In December, EU ministers made a big breakthrough in negotiations concerning the EU patent, agreeing to set up a single patent court for the EU. But the plan still has a long way to go, and for now, 27 EU governments are awaiting a legal opinion from the European Court of Justice and the input of the European Parliament before moving ahead.

What does this mean for patent translations? Since the London Agreement went into force in May 2008, most EU countries do not require translating a full patent into one of their official languages if the patent was drafted in one of the official languages of the EPO (i.e., English, French, or German). Several contracting states still require that the claims be translated into their official language, but do not require a translation of the description. The London Agreement has certainly reduced the translation costs involved in filing patents in Europe, which, according to the EPO, can account for over 40 percent of the overall filing costs. (For biotech and chemical patents, the translation costs can be significantly higher.) But the London Agreement—while it reduced the need for patent translation—did not solve the problem of high translation costs in Europe. Many EU states still have not signed the London Agreement, and as anyone who has filed a long patent application broadly across Europe knows, the translation costs can still be exorbitant, easily exceeding $100,000 when filing with expensive foreign associates. The EPO’s goal of a “post-grant language regime” where only claims have to be translated into national languages and the description can remain in English only still seems quite far away, and getting patent protection in the EU still costs 11 times as much as it does in the United States.

Obviously, an EU patent would supplant the London Agreement and could eliminate the need for any translations if the original application is written in English. Morningside will continue to closely monitor developments at the EPO and the EU as far as translations are concerned, in our continued efforts to reduce translation costs for our clients.

Morningside is a translation service which delivers top quality translations since we are a translation company that insists on reviewing each and every single legal translation or technical translation that is delivered to our clients.

Reviewing a technical translation or a legal translation requires not only a cursory review of the completed language translation, but also requires further layers of review.  As a translation company, we strive to ensure the review of the technical translation, legal translation, or patent translation that our client receives includes layers of review.

These layers of review include but are not limited to, review of language, review of specific terminology to ensure consistency, review of dialect, and review of spelling.  While there are other areas of review which we take care of, at the end of the day all of these measures are what makes Morningside your choice for a translation service or translation company.

Whether your needs include a document translation, legal translation, technical translation, patent translation, or document review, Morningside can assist you and provide you with a top quality translation and we ensure that the following time you are seeking a translation service or translation company, you will look to Morningside for their translation and review expertise.