EU patent office, Google seal pact on translation

EurActiv reports that the European Patent Office (EPO) and Google signed an agreement on the 24 March 2011 to collaborate on machine translation of patents into 32 European, Slavic and Asian languages.

[2014 note: Patent Translate is now complete and covers translations between English and 31 other languages, namely Albanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. Translation from and into French and German is also available for 27 of these languages - see hyperlink below for Patent Translate].

• Primary Source

EPO: Press Release, 24.3.11: EPO and Google break the language barrier for Europe’s innovators http://www.epo.org/news-issues/news/2011/20110324.html

Website: Google Translate http://translate.google.com/

ESO: Background information: EU seeks breakthrough in single patent quest http://www.europeansources.info/record/eu-seeks-breakthrough-in-single-patent-quest/

EPO: Searching for patents: Free online services: Patent translate http://www.epo.org/searching/free/patent-translate.html

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