How to translate patent examination documents: Translation of Office Action Notice

Key points of this article

The notice of examination action is not long, but every sentence is the basis for the reply. References to legal provisions, reference document numbers and claim modification suggestions must not be translated incorrectly.
Scanned documents can also be directly uploaded for translation, but if editing is required, OCR must be performed first or exported to Word.
Bilingual comparison makes it easy to compare the original text paragraph by paragraph, and is suitable for understanding the content of the document before deciding on the direction of reply.
Claims, reference document numbers and legal terms must be translated in a unified way to avoid the same concept being translated into two words.
The text used for submission must be reviewed by professionals, and the machine translation results are only used for understanding reference.

After receiving an office action from the State Intellectual Property Office or a foreign patent office, many people will first find a translator. This type of document is different from an application document: it is short in length, but each sentence is the basis for the reply. It contains references to legal provisions, comparison document numbers, suggestions for modifying claims, and often forms and stamp pages. Translating "includes" into "has" or mapping D1 to the wrong document may lead to the wrong answer.

This article is written for readers who need to understand the review opinion themselves first, or who want to hand it over to the team and agent for discussion. We will talk about how to use OmniDoc to translate the entire PDF, retain the layout, how to unify terminology, and what to check item by item after getting the translation. After reading it, you can judge which contents can be understood by yourself first and which ones must be confirmed by professionals.

How to translate the review opinion notice? One sentence conclusion

First read the entire text bilingually to understand the examiner's conclusions and reasons, and then decide on a response strategy. Translations involving claim modifications and legal basis should not be used directly for submission, but should be handed over to professionals for review sentence by sentence.

your situation	Recommended practices	reason
I just want to understand the reviewer’s conclusion and reasons first.	Upload PDF, select bilingual comparison, read through and mark the key paragraphs	It is easy to confirm understanding by comparing it with the original text, and it is not easy to miss the examiner’s restrictions.
Send content to team or agent for discussion	Choose to download only the translation, and attach a bilingual version as the basis for the original text.	Read smoothly during discussions, and go back to the original text to check if there is any controversy.
The notice is a scanned copy and needs to be altered or excerpted.	Process with OCR first, or export to Word and then edit.	It is difficult to select text directly from the scanned document. You need to obtain editable text before editing.
Prepare to submit response documents accordingly	The translation is for reference only, and the claims and legal expressions are left to professionals for finalization.	The wording of the submitted text directly affects the scope of rights and needs to be reviewed by someone with professional responsibility
Notification in English issued by the Foreign Office	Also upload a bilingual comparison, focusing on checking the number and date.	The terminology of English review opinions is different from that of the Chinese system, and manual confirmation of the corresponding relationship is required.

Before you start: Confirm these points first

Before taking action, judge the following items first, they will determine the subsequent processing method.

Document source and language. Notices issued by the State Intellectual Property Office are usually in Chinese, while those issued by foreign patent offices are mostly in English or other languages. Different languages have different terminology correspondences and key points that need to be checked.
Is it a scanned copy or an electronic version? Try selecting a piece of text with your mouse in a PDF and copying it. The electronic version can be selected; the scanned version cannot be selected and only the image can be seen. Scans can be uploaded directly for translation, but if you want to modify the text, you need to do OCR first.
Purpose is understanding or submission. Just to understand what the examiner means, the translation is sufficient. If you want to submit it as a reply material, the translation cannot be used directly and needs to be reviewed by a professional.
Reply Deadline and Attachments. The notice usually states a deadline for replying. Please refer to the original text for the deadline. Do not rely on the date in the translation. The attachments to the notice (such as comparison document list, search report) should also be kept together. They are as important as the main text.
Existing Glossary. If the team has previously determined the translation of words such as "claims", "comparison documents" and "creativity", sort them out first and use them in comparison during translation to avoid inconsistency.

Steps to translate Office Action PDF in OmniDoc

prepare a complete PDF**. Find the original file, confirm that the number of pages is complete, and save the attachments that need to be processed together as PDF.
Open omnidoc.top and upload PDF**. When uploading, select the files that need to be translated, and both the scanned and electronic versions can be uploaded directly.
Select output layout . When you need to compare the original text paragraph by paragraph, choose bilingual control; when you only want to read through or send it to colleagues, choose translation only.
choose style . The review opinions are mainly based on the legal text, and it is more appropriate to choose the legal style; if the large part of the document is the technical description of the document, you can make another translation of the technical style as an auxiliary reading.
unify common terms . If the page provides an option related to terminology consistency, open it and unify fixed translation methods such as "claim", "specification", "contrast document" and "reject" to avoid translating the same concept into different words in different paragraphs.
wait for the processing to be completed and download . After downloading the translation, first open and check the number of pages and tables to make sure that the layout is not misplaced.
deal with editable text when modification is needed. For scanned pieces or content that needs to be changed, you can use the desktop client's PDF editor to do OCR, or export to Word before editing. The desktop client can be downloaded from download.omnidoc.top.

# check item by item after completion

After you get the translation, don't just read it through. The following are the areas that are easy to ask questions and affect the answer.

Check item	What do you think?	What if there's a problem?
Claim number and citation relationship	Confirm whether the references such as "according to claim 1" and "any of claims 3 to 5" are consistent with the original text	Go back to the original text and compare it one by one, citing the place where the relationship is misplaced and submit it to the professional for verification.
Compare document numbers	Confirm that D1, D2 and other numbers correspond one to one in the translation and the original, and the names of the documents in the list are correct.	If the serial number is changed, immediately restore it to the original number and check the literature list.
Legal terminology	Check whether the words "novelty", "creativity" and "practicality" are unified and consistent with the team glossary	Reread the relevant paragraphs after unified replacement, do not change only one of them
Date and time limit	Check the figures and dates such as the date of the notice and the time limit for reply.	The date shall be based on the original text, and if inconsistencies are found, it shall be based on the original text and official notice.
Tables and values	Check whether the rows and rows of the table are aligned and whether the numbers are consistent with the original text.	Table dislocation can be re-checked back to the original table, and the numerical differences can be corrected one by one.
Inspector's conclusion	Confirm that the concluding statements such as "reject", "maintain" and "not creative" are consistent with the original text.	The conclusion must be checked with the original sentence by sentence, and if there is any doubt, please submit it to the professional for confirmation.

Both machine translation and OCR results need to be checked manually. The wording relating to the scope of rights should be based on the original text and the judgment of the professionals.

# which method is suitable for you?

- individual developers want to understand the meaning of the examiner first : read through in bilingual comparison, write down the comparative documents and main reasons cited by the examiner, and then discuss with the agent. - discussion and reply ideas within the team : only the translated version is sent to members for reading, the original and bilingual versions are retained at the same time, and the disputed paragraphs are returned to the original text for confirmation. - applicants or agents who need to submit response documents *: the translation is for understanding only, and the formally submitted text is reviewed and finalized by professionals. Readers dealing with foreign censorship comments: it is more reliable to unify key terms and numbers first, and then check dates and citations item by item, rather than reading through them directly.

# frequently asked questions (FAQ)

1. Can the translation of the notice of examination opinion be submitted directly to the Patent Office?

Direct submission is not recommended. The translation is suitable for understanding the review opinion, and the text of the formal reply deals with claims and legal representations, which need to be reviewed and finalized by professionals.

2. Do you want full-text translation of comparative documents (D1, D2)?

Not necessarily. The serial number remains intact, and the corresponding literature only needs to translate the key paragraphs and charts quoted by the inspector, and the rest will be processed as needed.

3. How to deal with the English censorship opinions issued by foreign bureaus?

The method is the same: upload PDF, select bilingual control, unify terminology, and focus on checking the citation relationship of number, date and claim. English terms do not exactly correspond to the Chinese system, and keywords need to be confirmed manually.

4. What do you want to see when choosing an online translation tool to process patent documents?

Focus on file size restrictions, whether to add watermarks, whether the privacy policy describes how files are handled, and whether typesetting and forms are retained. Patent documents contain a large number and forms, typesetting misplacement will increase the cost of checking.

# Summary

The focus of the translation of the review opinion notice is not on how fast the translation is, but on whether the numbers, citations and legal terms correspond accurately. First read the conclusions of the examiners in bilingual comparison, unify the terms and then check them item by item, and submit the key translations to the professionals for finalization, so that the translation of the patent examination documents can really be used in the reply work.

Open OmniDoc, upload the document and start translation.