German patent terminology has to remain coherent across an entire specification. This article explains why terms cannot be translated in isolation.
There is a stage in patent translation that happens before the right English words appear on the page.
You build the invention in your head.
Not necessarily every screw, surface and electrical connection. But you need enough of a working model to understand what the components are, how they relate to one another and what they actually do.
Which part fits inside which? What moves? What remains stationary? Does an opening extend through a component or merely into it? Is a particular element physically underneath another, or simply more fundamental to the invention? Do two parts rotate independently, or together?
Until questions like these begin to resolve themselves, apparently straightforward words can be surprisingly difficult to translate.
This is one reason I find the description of patent translation as converting words from one language into another rather inadequate.
The words provide the evidence.
The translator has to reconstruct the invention behind them.
A component can be drehfest – and still rotate
One of my favourite examples from German patents is drehfest.
At first sight, “fixed against rotation” seems an obvious enough concept.
But fixed against rotation relative to what?
Suppose component A is described as drehfest mit component B. It may mean that A cannot rotate relative to B.
That does not mean that either component is stationary.
A and B might be rotating together at considerable speed.
The important technical relationship may therefore be conjoint rotation: two components are connected in such a way that rotation of one is accompanied by rotation of the other.
If I understand drehfest simply as a property of component A – “A does not rotate” – I have constructed one machine.
If I understand it as a relationship between A and B – “A and B do not rotate relative to one another” – I may have constructed a completely different one.
The German word has not changed.
My understanding of the invention has.
And that leads to a principle that applies surprisingly often in patent translation:
The words do not always tell you what the machine is doing. Sometimes the machine tells you what the words mean.
Choosing a word can mean choosing a geometry
Consider Ausnehmung.
A bilingual dictionary might offer “recess”. In many patents, “recess” will be exactly right.
In others it won’t.
An Ausnehmung might be a recess, opening, aperture, cut-out, notch, cavity, slot or through-hole. Depending on the context, some of those possibilities may be technically distinct.
If I call the feature a “recess”, I may imply that it extends into a component without passing through it.
What if figure 3 shows otherwise?
Perhaps the feature extends all the way through the component. Now “through-hole” may be more appropriate.
But even that decision deserves scrutiny. Does the source actually tell me that the feature is a hole? Is its geometry important? Would “opening” preserve the breadth of the German more faithfully?
The apparently simple act of choosing an English noun can therefore amount to choosing a physical geometry for the invention.
This presents the translator with two opposing risks.
One is understanding too little and choosing the wrong term.
The other is claiming to understand more than the patent actually tells us.
The most specific English term is not automatically the most accurate.
Sometimes accuracy means resisting specificity.
What exactly is a Steg?
Then there is Steg.
Anyone who translates German technical material regularly will probably have developed a complicated relationship with this word.
A Steg might plausibly become a web, rib, bridge, bar, connecting portion or something else entirely.
The dictionary can give me candidates.
It cannot tell me which candidate the inventor built.
So I start looking around the invention.
Where is the Steg?
What is on either side of it?
Does it span an opening?
Does it reinforce another component?
Is it a narrow integral portion joining two larger regions?
Does it separate two spaces?
Can I see it more clearly in a sectional view?
What does the description say it actually does?
This is where patent drawings can stop being illustrations and become evidence.
A reference sign may allow me to follow the same component through several views. A sectional drawing may reveal a geometry that was invisible elsewhere. A sentence several pages away may finally establish its function.
Only then does one of the English candidates begin to look convincing.
Sometimes.
When ‘base’ doesn’t mean a base
German compounds can create a different problem because their internal structure can make a particular English translation look almost inevitable.
Take Grundelement.
Grund plus Element. “Base element.”
Perfectly logical.
Except that “base element” conveys a fairly strong physical idea in English. It suggests something foundational: perhaps a lower part, support or structure on which other components are arranged.
But Grund- can also point towards something basic, principal or fundamental.
Perhaps the Grundelement is actually the principal element of the device, surrounded by subsidiary components, without physically forming a base for anything.
“Main element” might then describe the intended relationship better.
Or perhaps neither does.
The important question is therefore not:
What does Grundelement mean?
It is:
What is this Grundelement in this invention?
Breaking a German compound into English equivalents for its constituent parts can produce a linguistically plausible answer before the technical question has even been asked.
Translating relationships between words
A still more interesting problem arises when a patent uses several apparently similar terms.
Suppose I encounter:
Nut
Rille
Kanal
Depending on the technical context, “groove” might initially look plausible for more than one of them.
But what if the patent uses all three consistently for different features?
Now I am not merely trying to translate three German nouns.
I am trying to determine whether the inventor has established three different technical concepts.
The drawings might eventually reveal that the Nut receives another component and is best understood as a slot; the Rille is a shallow surface groove; while the Kanal conducts a fluid and is therefore a channel or passage.
Perhaps:
Nut -> slot
Rille -> groove
Kanal -> channel
Problem solved.
Except patents are rarely so obliging.
The drawings might not distinguish them clearly. Their functions may overlap. The drafter may even have used the terms inconsistently.
The important point is that terminology has to be considered as a system.
If the source distinguishes A from B, indiscriminately using the same English term for both may erase that distinction.
But the opposite is equally dangerous.
If one German term is used consistently for one component, translating it variously as “support”, “mount”, “carrier” and “bracket” merely because English prose normally favours lexical variety can create distinctions that were never present.
A patent translator therefore translates terminology in two directions.
Vertically:
What English term corresponds to this German concept?
And horizontally:
How does this concept relate to all the other concepts in this document?
This is why deliberately repetitive English can sometimes be excellent patent translation.
When a ‘direction’ isn’t quite a direction
Spatial terminology creates another kind of trap.
German technical texts frequently use constructions such as in Axialrichtung and in Umfangsrichtung.
The obvious translations are “in the axial direction” and “in the circumferential direction”.
Sometimes those are perfectly satisfactory.
But the word Richtung can tempt us into attributing more directional meaning to the English than the physical situation warrants.
Something extending or moving axially may be following an axis without the text distinguishing one direction along that axis from the opposite direction.
Likewise, circumferential movement may occur along a circumference without specifying clockwise rather than anticlockwise movement.
So what is the patent actually describing?
A direction?
An orientation?
An extent?
A path?
An axis along which something can move in either sense?
The danger here is particularly subtle because a literal translation may be impeccable English.
It may sound technical and precise.
The problem is that the English translation may simply be more precise than the invention.
Patent translation is iterative
All these examples expose something else about the working process.
Terminology is not always decided once.
Suppose I encounter Grundelement on page two and provisionally use “base element”.
Then I continue translating.
On page nine, another embodiment reveals its relationship with three other components. Figure 6 shows its geometry from a different angle. Suddenly my “base” isn’t behaving very much like a base.
My mental model changes.
So I go back.
This is normal.
The process is less:
source word -> dictionary -> English word
than:
source text -> provisional interpretation -> mental model -> further evidence -> test interpretation -> revise model -> revise terminology -> test again.
A translation can therefore contain conclusions reached twenty pages after the words that prompted them.
That is one reason patent translation is such an intensely cross-referential activity.
Reading the patent sideways
Patent documents lend themselves to this kind of investigation.
A difficult expression in the description sends me to a drawing.
The drawing gives me a reference sign.
The reference sign takes me to another paragraph.
A claim makes me question the relationship I thought existed.
Another embodiment reveals that a term has to work more broadly than I initially assumed.
Sometimes the patent itself is insufficient and the investigation extends further.
A member of the same patent family may express something more clearly. Prior-art documents may reveal established terminology for the technology. Other patents from the same applicant or inventor may show how a recurring component is normally described.
None of this means replacing the source with whatever another document says.
It means gathering evidence with which to understand the source.
Patent translation can consequently feel less like reading a document from beginning to end and more like navigating a network.
And sometimes the drawings don’t save you
There is a tempting neatness to all this:
Ambiguous term.
Consult figure 4.
Locate reference sign 37.
Mystery solved.
Real patents are less considerate.
A drawing may be schematic. The relevant view may not exist. Two components may be impossible to distinguish. The description may repeat the same ambiguous terminology without adding anything useful.
Sometimes the source contains an apparent error.
Sometimes the reference sign seems wrong.
Sometimes you eventually conclude that the information needed to resolve the ambiguity simply isn’t there.
That is where inference and professional judgement become important.
But so does restraint.
There is a boundary between determining what an inventor probably means from the available evidence and silently adding information that the source never contained.
The translator should not make an invention artificially more coherent, specific or unambiguous simply because better English would result.
Sometimes accuracy means knowing what the patent tells you. Sometimes it means recognising what it doesn’t.
Claims: where relationships matter
These questions become particularly important when translating patent claims.
Claims are not ordinary technical prose. Under Article 6 of the Patent Cooperation Treaty, they define the matter for which protection is sought and must be clear, concise and fully supported by the description.
The translator’s role is not to rewrite those claims or make legal judgements on the applicant’s behalf.
It is to preserve their meaning.
That makes relationships important.
Is A connected to B?
Is A rotationally fixed to B?
Does a feature extend through something or merely into it?
Is a limitation associated with one element or several?
Does a term encompass several geometries or have I inadvertently selected only one?
The question cannot therefore stop at:
Does my English sentence sound right?
It has to include:
Does my English sentence still describe the same technical arrangement?
Fluent English and technical understanding are not the same thing
Artificial intelligence makes this distinction increasingly interesting.
Modern machine translation can produce remarkably fluent patent text. WIPO itself operates patent-specific neural machine-translation technology, and automated translation has transformed access to foreign-language patent information.
But fluent output does not remove the underlying technical question.
Suppose software gives me:
Ausnehmung -> recess
The English is perfect.
The question remains:
Is it a recess?
Or consider drehfest.
The system may generate a grammatically impeccable expression involving rotational fixing.
But has the output preserved the correct relationship between the components?
A translation can be linguistically convincing while quietly constructing the wrong machine.
The interesting boundary for professional patent translation is therefore not simply “human versus machine”.
It is between generating language and establishing meaning.
Making the invisible reconstruction visible
Recently, I have been exploring that idea from a completely different direction.
For Patents Brought to Life, part of my Translating Patents media project, I have been attempting to reconstruct unusual historical inventions visually from their patent documents.
Instead of asking what an invention should look like in English, I am asking what it might actually have looked like.
The process has felt oddly familiar.
A drawing gives me one piece of evidence.
A sentence in the description gives me another.
A reference sign changes my interpretation of a component.
Another figure reveals something hidden in the first.
Occasionally the documents leave something unresolved and I have to decide how much can legitimately be inferred.
Gradually, an object emerges.
Only this time other people can see the mental model too.
It has made me realise that the visual project is, in a sense, an external version of something I have been doing throughout my career as a patent translator.
The final reconstruction is simply different.
In Patents Brought to Life, it becomes an image or moving object.
In my translation work, it becomes English.
Finding the invention inside the words
Perhaps that is the hidden craft of patent translation.
Dictionaries matter. Patent databases matter. Search tools, terminology resources, translation software and machine translation all matter enormously.
But sooner or later, somebody has to decide what the words are describing.
A Steg has to acquire a shape and function.
An Ausnehmung has to become an intelligible physical feature — while remaining no more specific than the evidence allows.
A Grundelement has to find its place in the hierarchy or geometry of the device.
A Nut has to distinguish itself, if necessary, from a Rille and a Kanal.
And two components described as drehfest may have to start spinning together in the translator’s imagination.
Only then can the words really settle into place.
A finished patent translation contains no visible gears, shafts, bearings, circuits, channels or moving parts.
But somewhere between the source document and the finished English, I may have had to assemble them all.
Before you can translate the words, you have to find the invention inside them.
Standard German patent terms
As with all languages, German follows strict formal conventions with respect to patent terminology. There are many German patent words and phrases that have precise English equivalent terms. Unfortunately, the Internet is littered with poorly translated German patents, and so it is not uncommon to find incorrectly translated terms being used in many English translations of German patents.
A term like “im Wesentlichen”, for instance, has a precise meaning and equivalent standard translation in patent texts (i.e. as “substantially” – meaning ‘for the most part’, when the allowance for slight deviation prevents an invention from being unnecessarily limited in scope to ‘overly’ precise parameters), whereas it is often found incorrectly translated and understood. (For instance, the similar term ‘wesentlich’ has a completely separate meaning (“essential”) in patent terminology).
Even in the same patent text, it is also possible to find words used in different contexts and thus to mean different things. For example, “Verfahren” could signify a “method”, a “process” more generally (i.e. not pertaining to the invention), application “proceedings” or even something like “displace”/“displacement”. The word “Gegenstand” most often refers to “subject matter” of a patent, but could also, in a given patent text, refer simply and generically to an “object”. Solid knowledge of key patent terminology is essential to the correct and precise translation of German patents into English. There are hundreds of precise patent terms that need to be learned and correctly applied when translating from German to English. It is not enough to just know the terms. For example, it may be important in a given context to discern where the author of a text is referring generically with “Verfahren” to a “process” that is being used in a claimed “method” so as not to confuse and conflate the term with the claimed subject matter.
Article usage
Sometimes it is also a matter of understanding conventions pertaining to the use of “articles”. “Subject matter” (“Gegenstand” in German), for instance, is not used with the indefinite article in English patents (or patent translations), and the plural is not “subject matters”, but “subjects”. The German “Gegenstand der Erfindung”, however, is often to be translated into English as “the invention relates to..”, rather than any construction involving “subject matter”. The subject matter of a set of claims is often presented in German without the use of articles: e.g. “Verfahren zum/zur […]”, i.e. “Method for […]”). It is common practice to refer to the first instance of the subject matter (i.e. ‘method’ in this case) in English with the indefinite article (e.g. “A method for manufacturing”, and then to use the definite article for dependent claims (e.g “The method according to claim 1 […]”).
Article usage in English and German generally differs, but in the case of patents it is a matter of learning a whole set of unique patent conventions when it comes to articles. For example, “Der unabhängige Anspruch 1” is translated as “independent claim 1”, but “der geltende Anspruch 1” is correctly translated with the definite article in English as “the current claim 1”.
Translating terminology of an invention
Your German to English translator will often need to do research in order to correctly translate certain terms. Referring to the IPC (categories), any possible patent family and priority documents, the closest prior art and ultimately the patent drawings and the description/specification of an invention will be required in order to accurately translate certain terms. The drawings are often indispensable when it comes to interpreting the meaning of some German terms, particularly when there is nothing but a cursory mention of them in the description.
A common example is “Grund-”, which in compound nouns could mean a “base” but also “main”. For example, “Grundlkörper” might mean “main body” or “base body”. Context is key and sometimes it is important to determine the element’s position in relation to other system or device components, which is often only possible by referring to the available drawings.
The term “Steg” is another favourite, which could easily be translated into English in a dozen different ways depending on the context — examples including “web”, “bridge”, “connecting piece”, “rib”, “bar” etc. In this case, it is necessary to determine the shape and function of “Steg” to find the correct English translation.
Conclusion
When translating German patents to English, not only are experience, proficiency and research a requisite for all good and successful patent translators, but knowledge of and access to standard patent formulations, terms, conventions and style guides are also indispensable.
German patent texts are typically characterised by long, intricate sentences packed with technical details. The German language’s system of gender and cases in particular makes the meaning of nested clauses a lot easier to follow and less ambiguous than would be the case with equivalent sentence structure in English.
When translating German patents into English, it is important to ensure that ambiguity is not introduced into the English by rigidly following German sentence structure.
Relative pronouns
In English, relative pronouns (e.g. “which” and “that”) commonly immediately follow the noun or noun clause to which they refer.
With a German sentence like “An der Stirnseite des Gefäßes ist ein Rohr angeordnet, das sich in Richtung des Anlagenauslasses erstreckt”, to use the relative pronoun “which” as a translation of “das” might introduce ambiguity in an English translation: “A tube is arranged on the end face of the vessel, which extends in the direction of the system outlet”. The “which extends” could be misconstrued as referring to “the vessel” rather than the “tube”. In this case, it would be clearer to replace the relative pronoun with the conjunction “and”: “A tube is arranged on the end face of the vessel and extends in the direction of the system outlet”. When translating German patents into English, skill and discernment are needed in knowing when and how a different word order and/or structure is/are required.
In the context of relative pronouns, German’s use of commas to demarcate clauses also means that it is not always immediately apparent when a relative clause is a defining or non-defining relative clause. However, the placement of commas in English is particularly significant since the absence of a comma before a “which” relative clause will signify a defining clause. An understanding of the broader context is essential here to correctly differentiate between defining and non-defining clauses when translating German patents into English. An encompassing view and understanding of the invention by referring to the description, claims and drawings is paramount.
Active/passive voice
German patents heavily rely on passive voice to maintain an objective and formal tone (e.g. “Es wird gezeigt, dass…” = “It is shown that…”), whereas English patents tend to favour a more direct active voice in most cases where possible, often for the sake of readability. The main exception to intentionally rendering passive sentences of the German text as active constructions would most certainly be in the case of patent claims, where there is often less leeway in changing the structure of sentences. The structure of claims has often been chosen deliberately and for legally significant reasons.
As a result of the combination of the passive voice and seemingly ‘superfluous’ relative clauses, the meaning in English can get particularly convoluted if a literal translation is followed. This might be case in sentences using a word form like “durchströmbar” (e.g. “Das System ist mit Kühlmittel durchströmbar, das … zugeführt wird” – “Coolant can flow through the system and is fed …”; the German reads literally as “The system is flowed through by coolant, which is fed […]). In this case, a kind of passive construction in the German is translated with the active voice in the English translation and without the use of a relative clause since the “coolant” is the subject of both clauses.
Why translate German patents?
Since Germany is a contracting nation to the PTC and EPC, there is broad scope for getting German patents validated and/or ‘counter-filed’ in other countries as part of an international patent application. Given the dominance of English, not only as an official and accepted language with WIPO, EPO and many International Searching Authorities, but also as a major global language of science and trade, there is equally great need for German to English patent translation.
Patent translations in English are often used as an intermediary language for further translation into other regional languages. This makes the precision of such German to English translations particularly important. Seemingly minor discrepancies, errors or inconsistencies could potentially be magnified by the time a second or third translation is produced on the basis of the first English translation.
Translation into any language will have its own unique set of challenges and intricacies, and German to English translation is no exception.
General requirements of patent translation
Every single patent translation brings its own new and context-dependent challenges, where interpretation of meaning is sought across the different patent application documents (e.g. support and clarification of the claims will be sought in the description and drawings to an invention). In fact, it is always necessary to cross-reference parts of any text among the relevant application documents and drawings, not only for the sake of consistency of terms in the translation, but also to ensure the most basic understanding of how various components of an invention relate to one another and their nature (function, shape, location etc.). The translator will also often have to refer to a family document or even a prior art document for the sake of clarity.
Aside from the need for ‘intrinsic’ interpretation (i.e. using the text in question) of a patent document and its associated application documents (i.e. with the need to seek coherence, logic and consistency within a text and its translation), humans are messy, fallible and often illogical creatures. The authors of patent documents will create very real challenges for very human reasons: with typographical errors, inconsistent usage of terms, incorrect or inconsistent use of reference signs, errors with syntax and grammar, non-adherence to drafting rules and guidelines and/or inadvertent logical errors. It takes a degree of skill and experience to navigate these obstacles — knowing when to reproduce errors, find creative workarounds or make minor corrections (e.g. with basic typographical errors). In the case of some egregious errors in a source text, at first it can appear impossible to find an adequate translation. However, no matter the type of error encountered, the nature of the source language (e.g. German) will inevitably shape the form that many of those errors will take.
We will explore and share some of the unique aspects of German translation with you. And, hopefully, it will become quickly apparent just how much care, attention and effort are required to produce precise and quality patent translations.
Idiosyncrasies of German patent translation at a glance
1. Structure and word order
German sentences are often long and highly structured, but often with nested clauses and a lot more flexible word order than in English. Sometimes the order of clauses has to be flipped just to obtain a more natural word order in English. Nested clauses can throw up issues with the use of articles if the first clause in which a noun is met in a German sentence has to be flipped and made a second or third clause, for instance, in the English sentence, where the indefinite article will now have to be the definite article. Also, strict word order rules mean that associated verbs for a single clause can be separated by several lines of text in German — which in some cases means verbs being forgotten/omitted altogether by the author and/or a careful parsing of a sentence by the reader to match up a verb with its clause. The result of the above can be long trains of thought requiring a re-ordering of sentence structure to be more easily read and followed in English.
2. Passive voice
German patents heavily rely on passive voice to maintain an objective and formal tone. On the other hand, English patents tend to favour a more direct active voice, and the passive voice can often lead to unnaturally sounding and unclear sentences in English. Careful balance is needed to preserve the original intent of the author, bearing in mind that conciseness and clarity are actual requirements for patent claims.
3. Punctuation differences
German uses commas more frequently than English, especially in long sentences. Simply reproducing commas in English translations is not possible. The rules governing their use in English are different and may also depend in some cases on style guides. One instance of caution is where commas and their absence are the difference between defining and non-defining clauses. A comma or its absence could literally affect the scope of protection for an invention in English.
4. Non-equivalent words
There are words in German that are translated in any number of ways depending on the context or not at all.
For instance, the words “jeweils” and “jeweilig” are frequently mistranslated by inexperienced translators, and using context-dependent equivalents (perhaps in an attempt to fill valency in a sentence) can distort meaning. It is often necessary to actually check the wider context (e.g. to see whether several objects/components are referred to) to determine how to correctly translate “jeweils” and “jeweilig”. It is not uncommon to refer to the reference signs used and drawings in order to correctly interpret the meaning of “jeweilig”. The term “respective” (as an example of a possible translation for “jeweilig”) in English may require using plural forms of nouns in an English translation where singular nouns are used in the German source text.
Modal verbs are used differently in German too. The modal verb “sollen” has various meanings. Some common uses of the word “sollen” are to indicate: recommendations (e.g. should), purpose or intent (supposed to, intended to/for, aim), indirect statements (in which case the indicative form of the verb is most often required). Furthermore, the “sollte(n)” form is additionally used in conditional sentences.
In summary
German patent translation not only requires an excellent grasp of the German and English languages — syntax, grammar, usage and style – but also a knowledge of patent language conventions and terminology, as well as experience and skill in knowing how to negotiate the differences between these languages and being able to familiarise oneself with a given subject matter in hand and resolve issues on a case-by-case and context-dependent basis (i.e. with research and reference checking).