Divide each Difficulty （5/27に投稿した「困難は分割せよ」の英訳）

Patent translation is a daunting task. Most of the content is based on cutting-edge scientific and technological knowledge, and the text is also long. Certainly, the text is particularly strict to avoid misunderstandings, improve distinguishability from other patents, and to obstruct similar patent applications, but it is difficult to read and understand, making us translators want to cry. Recently, machine translations are becoming popular, but even with the latest machine translation technology, patent documents are still too difficult. In the case of short sentences, machine translations are useful, but in the case of long sentences, such as those often seen in patents, the translation may not make sense, or the meaning may even be reversed. On the other hand, such difficult translation projects can be said to be the perfect opportunity to showcase your skills.

"Divisez chacune des difficultés" (divide each difficulty) is a quote from René Descartes, a renowned French philosopher. The American automobile magnate Henry Ford, whether knowing this quote or not, adopted this idea of division to the labor system to create a mass production system for cars. Likewise, Bill Gates is also said to be good at breaking down complex problems into several independent problems. Perhaps this is even wisdom from an older age, as in the Latin quote, "divide et impera" (divide and conquer).

I too pondered if I could do the same and adopt this quote to patent translation. A long sentence, such as one found in a patent document, can be divided into several short, chunk-like phrases or clauses, such as between punctuation marks. These blocks of phrases or clauses can often be translated as a unit without needing to further split. However, English and Japanese are grammatically different languages, so the order of these blocks often have to be reorganized. Meaning, in other words, it is best to not translate the entire sentence as it is, but to rather translate short phrases or clauses of the sentence and then rearrange the translated phrases and clauses according to the grammar. By doing so, even long sentences such as those in patent documents can be translated relatively more easily. For instance, by color-coding corresponding phrases and clauses in the same color, the relation between phrases and clauses becomes clear, allowing for more accurate translations and improved efficiency in translation checks. Perhaps for experienced translators, this might have already been commonsense, but I hope this serves you helpful.