Report On U.S. Patent Translation Under The Guidance Of Communicative Translation Theory

A U.S. patent filed in China is a set of exclusive rights granted by Chinese government to anAmerican inventor or applicant for a limited period of time (normally20years from the filingdate). It is a legal document defining ownership of a particular area of new technology. Withmore and more information and technical exchanges between the countries, there is an increasingawareness for countries to file patent applications to protect their own intellectual property rights.For a long time, U.S. has been the second largest applicant of patent filings in China; hence aremarkable portion of U.S. patent documents are to be translated in China. Taking PeterNewmark’s communicative translation theory as the guidance, this report attempts to apply PeterNewmark’s communicative translation theory to the practice of U.S. patent translation. Thewriter hopes that this report can provide valuable translation strategies to for translators toimprove the quality of U.S. patent translation.This report is based on the writer’s internship in Beijing RWS Science&TechnologyInformation Consultancy Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as BJ-RWS), and this report givesdetailed information about U.S. patent and U.S. patent translation, as well as task description,process description, and case analysis under communicative translation theory. With caseanalysis, the writer gives a comprehensive review of communicative translation theory putforward by Peter Newmark and U.S. patent translation strategies guided by his theory. As thecommunicative translation attempts to produce on readers an effect as close as possible to thatobtained on the readers of the original text, the writer suggests that a patent translator should takesufficient consideration to the lexical characteristics, the syntactical characteristics and thediscourse characteristics of the U.S. patents and adopt proper translation strategies in the U.S.patent translation process. The writer hopes this report can shed some light on U.S. patenttranslation studies.