The globalization of innovation has meant an increasing need to seek IP protection across international borders. The requirement for accurate and timely translation of IP related documents has therefore come to the front and centre of the overall IP workflow.
Many organizations, forced to rein in costs, are cutting IP budgets and looking to their IP departments to operate more efficiently. For some, this might result in a decision to use internal native speakers with subject expertise to bring translation services in-house, versus outsourcing to a professional patent translations provider. However, the use of in-house staff could, at best, lead to cost inefficiencies and, at worst, introduce major areas of risk.
The risk of missing deadlines through tying up in-house staff with translation work can be significant and potentially very costly. These employees should be spending their time supporting the business strategy rather than being distracted by other tasks.
Even more costly could be the risk of legal action and loss of protection arising from the use of poor quality translations. This risk is mitigated if you use a supplier who surrounds their translators by a quality assurance infrastructure and who is able to select the most appropriate expert for each project. Translators need to display a combination of skills, including an advanced degree or industry experience in the technical domain of the matter to be translated, proven experience with the source language, native-level proficiency in the target language, and a familiarity with the peculiarities of the language used in patents.
Using a translation supplier, which has globally distributed translation resources and a low cost base, will save time and money and ensure quality compared to the true, full cost of conducting the work in-house.
Also the need for translations may vary significantly across the year depending on workload. The most cost-effective way to deal with this variation is to outsource the work so you only pay for the use of a translator when the need arises.
Your choice of partner can significantly affect the extent to which cost-savings and efficiencies are realized. Using a number of different local law firms and vendors in various countries for IP translation services is time consuming to manage, and the costs can vary widely and be difficult to predict effectively. Quality and consistency can also be difficult to control.
By working with just one point of contact and a single billing process, an organization can simplify their workflow and benefit from the economies of scale that come from using one provider for all their language needs.
In today’s fast moving commercial environment, the need for a reliable, efficient, accurate and, above all, timely translation service is paramount. Working with the right supplier allows an organization to benefit from a simple patent translation solution embedded in their workflow to do the heavy-lifting in terms of sourcing high quality translations worldwide. This enables the IP team to speed the process and manage the costs while maintaining high quality at all times.
Clarivate Analytics has been providing high quality expert patent translations in more than 50 languages, with specific coverage of the main languages required by patent jurisdictions worldwide.
Find out why you should partner with Clarivate Analytics for your IP translation needs.
