Quantitative analysis of patent translation

Abstract

This paper evaluates patent translation quality from the perspectives of readers. An integrated Translation Quality Assessment model, combining theory and practice, is devised in this research to evaluate patent abstract translations, and the evaluation is divided into three parts. The first is error of meaning, the second part deals with errors in form, and the last part is error of compliance, which includes readability, comprehensibility, clarity, and concision levels. A simple statistical analysis was used to explain the general features found in this translation quality assessment, namely range, median, and mean. The overall results demonstrate that both Chinese and English texts had complied with the standards from the patent office for readable, comprehensible, clear, and concise texts, and a further analysis revealed that Chinese text quality influenced the quality of the English translation. In addition, it was found that the more errors there were in a text, the less likely it was to comply with given standards.