When a patent examiner in a foreign patent office reads the claims and notices an error - an error that likely was caused by poor translation - they will submit an office action against the invention, claiming that it is not suitable to receive a patent. Unfortunately, having an accurate patent in the original language will not circumvent the problem, and as with any legal proceeding, the time and effort to resolve the issue wastes valuable resources.
Here at MultiLing, we do not simply sample small parts of the documentation for quality. Instead, we review all documentation, page by page, in every step of our process. One sampling process we complete is simply to provide linguistic feedback to our translation teams via a uniform metric. Many of our review steps (such as format verification and terminology verification) are performed automatically through software or QA scripts. Some review steps are performed manually. Each project has multiple review steps that ensure conformance with our client's prescribed translation process.
This multifaceted quality process is managed by our proprietary enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, GoldenEye. GoldenEye has customized checklists for each client and each filing process (PCT and EPO). GoldenEye also includes a sophisticated project tracking system that helps team members avoid errors while processing these files. All information is shared and distributed efficiently through a lateral form of management that creates ownership, team responsibility, and inter-team collaboration.
