Machine Translation Summit XIV

Current Status of Machine Translation Systemin the JPO

September 2, 2013
Hitoshi HONDA
Patent Information Policy Planning Office
Japan Patent OfficeTitle：Current Status of Machine Translation System in the JPO
Contents:
１．JPO’s Current Translation Utilization
1-1. Translation Role in Examination Work
1-2. Mutual Utilization of Examination Information with Foreign Offices
through Machine Translation
1-3. Industrial Property Information Dissemination to the Publicin English

２． Approach for Quality Improvement of Machine Translation(Japanese to English)

３． Further Utilization of Machine Translation
1１．JPO’s Current Translation Utilization
1-1. Translation Role in Examination Work2

Translation Role in Examination Work(a) Understanding the inventionof the application(b) Consideration of search policies(c) Searching documents

Regarding “Searching documents”> Easy access to foreign documents(d) Comparison & judgment(e) Notice of examination results3

Stored Data of Patent Documents
JPJapanesefull text

USEPWOCNDEFRCA

GBCH

Others (*)□ □○Japaneseabstract○ ○Englishfull text○ ○ ○EnglishabstractKR△○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○○ Original sentences○ Human-translated sentences△ Start the creation through human translation from FY2012*:DE utility models and RU,
AU and other country fulltexts and abstracts

Will create through machine translation in FY201441-2. Mutual Utilization of Examination Information
with Foreign Offices
through Machine Translation

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Provision of the JPO Examination Results in English
AIPN: Advanced Industrial Property Network> The JPO exam results are distributed via the Internet(only for Examiners)> The Information is translated into English byJapanese - English Machine Translation.

J-E MTJPOPatent applications

61 Foreign IP Offices /Organizations at present

Applicants
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Example of AIPN Search Results

Examples of document
titles in Japanese(Provided here for reference only)

Application Info.
＆Legal Status Info.

File Wrapper
Document List
Office Action,
Search Report,
Written Opinion,
Examiner’s Noteetc.

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Example of Patent Examination-related Information

Notification

Description> Dictionary： 85,000 words+ 5,000 words have been added every year8

1-3. Industrial Property Information Dissemination
to the Public in English

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Industrial Property Digital Library (IPDL) – English Version Service

Patent & Utility ModelDBMachine TranslationDesign DB
Machine Translation

Trademark DB

English Databases on IPDL
１. Patent & Utility Databases
DB with Machine Translation Service
Patent & Utility Model Gazette DB
Patent & Utility Model ConcordanceFI/F-term Search
Human Translation Database
Patent Abstracts of Japan (PAJ)
Patent Map Guidance

２. Design Database
DB with Machine Translation Service
Design Gazette DB

３. Trademark Database
Database (Bibliographic Items such as Dates and Numbers)
Japanese Trademark Database
Japanese Figure Trademarks
Japanese Well-Known Trademark
List of Goods and Services10

A Referral Example of Patent and Utility Model Publications＜Publication of an unexamined patent application＞

All parts of the text (except drawings) are translatedby Machine Translation.
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２． Approach for Quality Improvement ofMachine Translation(Japanese to English)

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Routine Operation
Collection and registration of unknown words
Unknown and untranslatable words are collected in IPDL and AIPN
and added to the user dictionary (5,000 words/year).
So far 85,000 words were included.

Feedback from foreign IPOs
Mistranslation feedback provided by AIPN users (examiners of foreign offices)
is analyzed and registered in the dictionary.

Upgrade of machine translation engine
Enrichment of translation knowledge and increase in the number of technical and IP terms(December, 2011)

Establishment of translation memories
Fixed expressions used for notification of reasons for refusal are registered intranslation memories.
(a) The survey was conducted for the quality improvement of Japanese to English
machine translation on AIPN in 2003, 2007 and 2008. Based on the results, fixed
expressions were extracted and about 1,110 sentences were registered.
(b) Fixed expressions (about 460 sentences) which examiners use in drafting
notification of reasons for refusal were registered in 2009, 2010 and 2012.
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Approach for the Quality Improvement of Machine Translation~IP5 Project (lead by KIPO)○Mutual Machine Translation
Aim: “To help the offices overcome the language barrier of patent information andallow greater access to each other’s patent information.”Error review feedback process (September ～ December 2011)
Feedback from EPO andUSPTO was utilized.

Upgrade of machine translation engines
by JPO, KIPO, and SIPO （January 2012 ～）> Based on the feedback results, JPO, KIPO and SIPO upgraded theirmachine translation engines.
> JPO, KIPO and SIPO reported improvement results to IP5 respectively.
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３．Further Utilization of Machine Translation

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Machine Translation in Various IP Offices Worldwide
Providing the search and examination resultsin English has become standard practice.

JPO

KIPO（Korea）

AIPN, IPDLSIPO（China）

KIPRISC-J and K-J Translators in future

K-E translator

J-E translator

EPO（Europe）

C-E translator

Internet

esp@cenet

General Public(Partly available via
KIPRIS、PAIR, etc.）

Machine translation in future

USPTO（US）

Other IP Offices（in Asian countries, etc.）

PAIR16

The Number of Published Publications> The number of Chinese and Korean patent documents have beenincreasing.
> The urgency is required for arranging environments,
where such documents are easily searchable.
The Number of Published Publications(ten thousand)

Etc.
CNKREP

USJP(date of publication)
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Development of Chinese to Japanese Dictionaries• In 2012, JPO created Chinese-Japanese parallel translation dictionary with a million technical terms
used in patent documents, intending the contribution to the quality improvement of Chinese toJapanese machine translation of Chinese documents.
• In 2013, another million words of Chinese to Japanese parallel translation dictionary data will becreated .
Creation flow

Extraction of a document pair of a
Chinese patent gazette and aJapanese patent gazette within a samefamily
Creation of Chinese and Japanese parallel corpora with theautomatic sentence alignment tool

Automatic extraction of candidates of titles and translation
words from Chinese and Japanese parallel corpora.
Candidates for a bilingual dictionary extracted automaticallyare examined by the person having technical knowledge incharge of checks.
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Approach for Chinese and Korean Documents

Roadmap (tentative)
FY2011

Japaneseabstracts

FY2012FY2013

FY2014FY2015FY2016 –Development
Start of provision

Development

Search of MT Abstracts of CN UM

Start of provision Search of HT Abstracts of CN Patents

FI/F-term to be assigned in FY2013 as well

Development ofResearch
Chinese→Japanesedictionary
Full-text searchsystem using MTof Chinese/Korean→ Japanese

Add words to the dictionary using
HT abstracts
Development

MT dictionary effectively used forfull-text search system

System to be released inJanuary 2015

Japanese full-text search ofCN/KR patent and UM
documents

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Thank you for your attention

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