The Changing World of Japanese Patent Translators

by Steve Vlasta Vitek
Japanese patent translation
 

Some 15 years ago when I lived in San Francisco, a Japanese patent translation agency in downtown called and asked whether I could come to their office to have a look at a patent. It had been faxed to them by a law firm but they were not sure whether it was legible enough for translating because, like most translation agencies, they could not read Japanese. So I took the bus downtown and then an elevator to the agency's office on Market Street to have a look at what appeared to be a third generation fax. It was hopeless. Nobody can possibly read these illegible blobs, I said to the disappointed agency owner and went back to Market Street to wait for my bus for the ride back home, surrounded by the colorful, multilingual, and smelly San Francisco human Zoo that populates the downtown bus lines. (I used to put on my earphones to blend into the environment and turn the radio off to listen in on conversations in foreign languages if I knew the language, or listen to music if nobody talked about anything interesting or if they talked in a tongue that was foreign to me).

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