An Advanced Multilingual MT System:
Facilitating Patent Examination and Search
Cao Jingcheng

China Patent Information Center, CNIPA
February 2023

CNPAT & MT History
For 34 years, CNPAT has been continuously committed to thedevelopment of patent information automation systems and related
services including patent information processing, dissemination andconsultation.

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About CNPAT
Development of patent information
automation systems◼ Information sharing platform for patents on epidemic
prevention against COVID-19◼ CPRS patent search platform……

Patent information processing, dissemination,and consultation◼ Multilingual machine translation system◼ Patent data processing service◼ Patent information retrieval and analysis service……

PARTNERS
Patent data management

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CNPAT Machine Translation History

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Multilingual MT system in application

MT application in
the new generation intelligent patentexamination and search systemof CNIPA

5Multilingual MT system in application
7 languages
Chinese, English, Germany, French, Japanese, Korean, RussianMultiple data formats
XML/Word/PPT/Excel/PDF

Patent and non-patent literature
100 million+ from over 100 countries, regions and organizations

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Clarifying Needs
Facing Pain Points

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IP for innovation

2018

2019

2020

Added Value Data of Patent-intensive Industries (RMB 100 million)
Share of Added Value of Patent-intensive Industries in GDP (%)(Source: 2022 China’s IP Development Status Evaluation Report, released by CNIPA on December, 2022 )8

Urgent need for high-quality patent machine translation(Source: KEY IP5 STATISTICAL INDICATORS 2021)(Source: World Intellectual Property Indicators 2022)
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Challenges in patent machine translation
Unique patent systems

Different data formats
Broad range of technical fields
Terms & Complex sentences
Out-of-vocabulary words, special symbols & placeables

Data noise
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Customizing MT System
Focusing on Translation Quality

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CNPAT’s multilingual MT system construction basis

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•
•
•

NMT technology
Advanced word segmentation technology
Machine learning error correction model03••

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AI technology

30+ years
patent translation
experience

Linguistic analysis teamExperienced patent translation and quality
assessment team

02••

Corpus resources

Global patents
Advanced corpus processing techniques

04••

Systemcustomization
service

Quick response
Good extensibility

Our work in multilingual MT system construction
Corpus construction and optimization✓ Obtaining high quality training data asa foundation of model training

Pre-processing/post-processing tuning✓ Flexibly generating integrated
solutions for specific batches ofpatent data

Model training and parameter adjustment✓ Locating optimal model andparameters through iterative training

Cloud-based engine construction✓ Achieving distributed processing
capabilities and good extensibility

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External translation memory✓ Enhancing translation quality withmultilingual MT glossaries andtranslation memories

About the multilingual MT system
Benefits and features• Translation quality competitiveness for all language pairs• Language scalability• Real-time translation and batch translation• Automatic language recognition• Translation memory & glossaries• Supporting application in multiple scenarios• Supporting local and cloud deployment• Confidentiality• Work standalone and can also be fully integrated

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Embracing Innovation

Always on The Road

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Multilingual MT system

Goals• To provide fast and accurate translation ofmultilingual patent documents on the premiseof ensuring data security• To expand the scope of patent retrieval andimproving patent browsing efficiency for patentprofessionals and the public• To offer translators high-quality machinetranslation output for quick post-editing

Design thought
Cross-platform transferability

Translation memory
Term baseDomain adaptation

NMT Technology
16Future work

Advance in in-depth study on machinetranslation needs and machine translation
technology

Consolidate and enhance industrial
and technical advantages of machinetranslation in the field of intellectual
property
Boost translation quality
improvement, functional enrichment,
and technological upgrade of themultilingual MT system
Deliver high-quality patent information services in thenew development stage*17

THANK YOU!
Contact info: caojingcheng@cnpat.com.cn

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