A Report On C-E Patent Translation Under The Guidance Of Optimal Relevance

An international patent application is required if an invention wants to be protected in foreign countries. In order to avoid the troubles of filing the patent application to each country every time, thirty-five countries established Patent Cooperation Treaty(PCT) in 1970 in Washington. As the treaty simplifies the procedure of international patent application, most of patent applicants prefer to file the international patent application to World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO) by means of a PCT route. The international patent application filed by a patent applicant needs to be examined by the International Searching Authority, and the examination result is fed back to the applicant in the form of Written Opinion of the International Searching Authority(WOSA).This report is based on the writer’s one-year experience on the C-E translation of WOSA. WOSA mainly contains reasoned statement under PCT Rule 43 bis.1(a)(i) with regard to novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability. The relevance theory of translation regards translation as a reasoning process of interpreting the original text, the translator needs to find optimal relevance therein, and deliveries this relevance to the audience. The writer analyses typical problems selected from the translation practice, and proposes corresponding translation skills under the guidance of optimal relevance principle.