Mind the language gap! Multilingual Searching in Practice

© 2014 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß© 2015 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß
WissensWert Tutorial
Mind the language gap!
Multilingual Searching in Practice

© 2014 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß© 2015 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß© 2014 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß© 2015 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß
About WissensWert Consulting
We provide expert support in the field of patent information:
• Patent searching in the field of chemistry, engineering, materials
(metalls, polymers, paper, textiles)
• Consultancy in the selection / implementation of patent information
databases / software
• Training on all issues of patent information in German and English,
as open seminars and webinars as well as inhouse, subjects are
worldwide free patent databases, basic searching, professional
searching, patent classification, legal status, citations, results
processing, and more)
www.wissenswert-seminare.de
Phone 02361-9040-273 Mail g.kirch-verfuss@wissenswert-wm.de
2

Multilingual information retrieval
What is it?
Making digitally stored information items available,
regardless of the language they are written in.
3

Warning to language freaks
A Prussian got lost in Munich. A group of locals (Bavarian) is waiting at a
tram stop. The Prussian asks one of them in High German:
"Können Sie mir sagen, wo es hier zum Bahnhof geht?" No reaction.
The Prussian now tries in English:
"Excuse me, can you tell me the way to the station?" Again, no reaction.
Now he tries in French, Spanish, Russian and Japanese. No reaction.
The Prussian moves on quiet frustrated.
Says one of the Bavarians:
"Hund sans scho, de Preissn. Fünf Spracha hot a kennt."
Says one of the others: “Des scho – aber wos hats eam gnutzt? "
4
„Foxy they are, these Prussians.
Five languages he knew.“
„True, but what did it help him?“www.uni-marburg.de/fb09/igs/mitarbeiter/wiese/linguistenwitze

Multilingual searching
• Nowadays searching in multiple languages
does not demand skills in a variety of languages,
except English.
• But there is a demand for more general skills
in state-of-the-art search technology.
5

As an example: Additive manufacturing
www.eos.info
6

© 2014 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß© 2015 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß 7
www.eos.info

Additive manufacturing as an example
8
Journal
Webside

Development of patent applications in the field
9
Additive manufacturing
Source Patbase

Development of technical literature in the field
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
10
Publication yearSource INSPEC

© 2014 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß© 2015 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß© 2015 WissensWert Seminare Dr. Kirch-Verfuß
Generative manufacturing
Sheet layer manufacturing
Rapid Manufacturing
Rapid prototyping
3D-printing
Three-dimensional printing
3D-shaping
Three-dimensional shaping
Electron Beam Melting
Laser Deposition
Laser Melting
Laser Sintering
Powder Bed Fusion
…
11
Further terms:

Agenda
12
• Usage of language – in general, in science and in patents
• Patent information searching with words
 Using the English language
 Using machine translation
 Using Crosslingual searching
• Non patent literature searching with words
• The future of multilingual searching

10 World languages (in millions of people)
Language Native speakers Worldwide speakers Internet users
English 375 1.500 851
Chinese 982 1.100 705
Spanish 330 420 245
Arabic 206 300 156
Portuguese 216 235 132
Japanese 127 128 115
Russian 165 275 103
French 79 370 92
German 105 185 84
Korean 78 78 ?
13
www.weltsprachen.net http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

http://blog.unbabel.com/2015/06/10/top-languages-of-the-internet/
English –
THE universal language
on the internet

What is special about the English language?
English
• is the universal language of the Internet,
• is the language of international communication,
• is the intermediate language for machine translation
15

What is special about the English language?
• English is often used by non-native speakers and writers.
• Many texts published on the internet are written in a
simplified variant of the English, contain errors and might
even be hard to understand.
16

What is special about the German language?
• Compound constructions like Additivherstellungsvorrichtung
In English: additive manufacturing device
Requires particular handling for information searching:
 Special indexing of German text, i.e. breaking the word
into its constituent parts
 Need for left truncation for searching
• Diacritics: ä, ö, ü, ß
17

What is special about the Finnish language?
“When Finns speak, everbody listens –
it's just that nobody else understands”
by Bill Farmer (Knight-Ridder newspapers)
• Special wording – an example:
cigarette lighter = savukkeensytyttimen
• Finnish has numerous grammatical cases,
similar to the Ungarian language.
Concerning information searching:
 Problems with machine translation
18

What is special about the Asian languages?
• No whitespaces between words
• Whole sentences written as continuous strings of
characters.
 Difficulties in indexing of asian text
Solution: Word segmenter software helps to find the most
plausible splitting of a sentence into words.
19
从技术角度看，该魔方的缺点是要相当复杂的实施小的构建方体，
这导致形状复杂并且成本高。
The disadvantage of this puzzle cube is rather complicated
execution of the small building cubes, from the technical
point of view, which makes the shape complicated and high
cost. CN104582803

Various types of languages each with ist
own way of expression
• Scientific language
• Technical language
• Language of media publications
• Professional Jargon
• Patentese
20

Scientific language – Example
Larsen, Michael Byrnes; Thesis (Ph.D.) University
of Washington, 2015
Fundamental and Applied Investigations in
Solid-State Polymer Mechanochemistry
21

Which
language is
used in
science?
Scientific
articles in
Scopus
Time period

Technical language – Example
Xu, Hongxiao et al.; Proceedings of the Fraunhofer
Direct Digital Manufacturing Conference 2014
Towards Improved Thermal Management of Laser
Beam Melting Processes
23

Language of media publications – Example
Forbes Tech May 2012
“Additive manufacturing technologies create a
world of possibilities that can take an
organization in an entirely new direction and help
launch new businesses and business models,”
said Wohlers of Wohlers Associates.
24
The Little Black Book of Billionaire SecretsMay 2, 2012

Professional Jargon – Example
FORMRISE GmbH http://formrise.com/
Laser sintering is a worthwhile manufacturing
method not only for the product launch process,
but also when forecasts of the number of units to
produce are unclear.
25

Patentese – an example
A glass
Half full?
Half empty?
26
Open ended cylinder
horizontally bisected
by liquid H2O

Patentese – Example
EP2890466A1
METHOD FOR
TRANSFORMING A THREE
DIMENSIONAL DIGITAL
MODEL IN A SPACE OBJECT
MADE OF SHEET MATERIAL
27

A general problem – diversity of language
• Verbalise one concept by a variety of linguistical
expressions
• Verbalise several concepts by the same
linguistical expression
28

Synonyms
A synonym is a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly
the same as another word or phrase in the same language.
manufacturing
production
makingpreparing
fabrication
assembling
composition

Synonyms – an example
30
Fowlers Modern English Usage
Pigeon:
the word in everyday use
Dove:
the word found in poetical or
symbolic context

Homonyms
note
tone (in music)
memoremark
bank note
A homonym is a word that is said or spelled the same way as
other words but has different meanings.

„Homonymic“ phrasing
EP1925219A Channel wall element
The invention is about a tabacco channel in a
machine for cigarette production
32
Steel pilings Sewage tunnel

„Homonymic“ phrasing
Additive manufacturing is
• either
a kind of 3D shaping
• or
production of additives
33

Agenda
34

English - the Language of patents?
• Patents are published in the official language or
one of the official languages of the publishing patent office.
• For most offices this is the national language.
• Some patent offices allow for English applications without
later translation, with correspondence in English and finally
with English patent publications, e.g. Sweden.

English - the Language of patents?
Regional patent offices have their own language regimes –
for example:
• EAPO (Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan ...)
100 % Russian
• EPO
70 % English, 23 % German, 7 % French
• WIPO
62 % English, 15 % Japanese, 11 % German, 4 % Chinese,
4 % French, < 1 % Arabic, < 1 % Korean, < 1 % Portuguese,
< 1 % Russian and < 1 % Spanish

825136
571612
328436
204589
147987
63167
44914 43031 34741 30884 29717 22938 16886 15444
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
900000
CN US JP KR EP DE RU IN CA BR AU UK FR MX
37
Patent offices with most applications
35%
35%
14%
9%
2%
2%
1%
1%
1%
Chinese
English
Japanese
Korean
German
Russian
Portugese
French
Spanish
Publishing
languages
(estimated)
WIPO 2013

• Patent families
• Patent abstracts
• Full text of patent documents
What is special with patent information?
• Patent families
38

Patent family – definitions
A patent family in general
A collection of related patent applications covering the same
or similar technical content.
A simple patent family specifically
A set of patent documents protecting the (most likely) same
invention filed in several countries which are related to each
other by one common priority filing.

Patent families effecting search results
Documents
Title 750
Abstract 997
Titel and Abstract 1252
Description 12
Claims 2
40
DEPATISnet search for „Additive manufacturing“
Content of the DEPATISnet
patent database:
• > 90 million patent documents
• with title and abstract
• Fulltext for DE documents only

Patent families effecting search results
Documents Families
Title 761 376
Abstract 1008 602
Titel and Abstract 1266 711
41
DEPATISnet search for „Additive manufacturing“
The DEPATISnet result
set is processed so that it
has one member per
family only.
As soon as the text of one family member comprises the
search terms the document is included in the result set.

Priority document
Source: SIP
Invention Manager
No English text
English textEnglish text

A German utility model
43
DE 202015004336 U
Vorrichtung zum Auftragen
zumindest eines Werkstoffes,
Extruder, 3D-Druckkopf, 3D-Drucker,
Werkzeugmaschine und
Steuereinrichtung
Patent family list in DEPATISnet

How often do we have to expect no family members
44
Patent families by origin and number of offices
Source WIPO 2014
% Better don‘t rely on English
language family members!

• Patent families
45

Patent abstracts
• Abstracts written by the applicant
• Abstracts written by a patent office
• Abstracts from patent abstracting services
46

Abstracts written by the applicant
Regulated by standards and rules
Rules WIPO Standard 12
The abstract should enable the reader thereof […] to ascertain
quickly the character of the subject matter covered by the
technical disclosure.
DPMA guidelines on patent abstracts
The abstract is for technical information purpose only, in a way
to allow for a quick overview of the content of the invention
and also to be used in documentation systems.
47

The aim of an abstract …
• is to support post search review of search results
• is to support a rough understanding of an
invention without reading the full document
• is not primarily to support the discovery of the
document by searching the abstract text.
48

Abstracts written by patent office
Offices, that generate an English language abstract:
• WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organisation
• SIPO – Chinese Patent Office
• KIPO – Korean Patent Office
• JPO – Japanese Patent Office
• …
Except for WIPO the preparation of the English
abstract takes some time (around three months).
49

Abstract in Bulgarian language
WO English abstract used all over the family

Original Bulgarian Patent abstract
BG111248 Изобретението се отнася до методът за преобразуване на
триизмерен дигитален модел в пространствен обект от листов материал и
може да намери приложение за изследване на триизмерни дигитални модели
и създаване на пространствени обекти от листов материал, които
представляват точно копие на съществуващ обект (музеен експонат,
скулптура и други) или свободно генериран такъв, както и за мащабиране на
модели на движими и недвижими културно-исторически паметници на
културата, архитектурни сгради и туристически обекти. Методът включва
поставяне на триизмерен дигитален обект (1) в геометрична форма (2),
създаване на формообразуващи елементи чрез разрязване на обект с
равнина, изрязването им и последващото им подреждане до изграждане на
пространствен обект, при което се образуват едновременно два
самостоятелни обекта - позитив и матрица, като и двата са изградени от
листов материал.
51

Google translate
52
https://translate.google.com

Patent abstract – Google machine translation
BG111248 Изобретението се отнася до методът за преобразуване на
триизмерен дигитален модел в пространствен обект от листов материал и
може да намери приложение за изследване на триизмерни дигитални модели
и създаване на пространствени обекти от листов материал, които
представляват точно копие на съществуващ обект (музеен експонат,
скулптура и други) или свободно генериран такъв, както и за мащабиране на
модели на движими и недвижими културно-исторически паметници на
културата, архитектурни сгради и туристически обекти. Методът включва
поставяне на триизмерен дигитален обект (1) в геометрична форма (2),
създаване на формообразуващи елементи чрез разрязване на обект с
равнина, изрязването им и последващото им подреждане до изграждане на
пространствен обект, при което се образуват едновременно два
самостоятелни обекта - позитив и матрица, като и двата са изградени от
листов материал.
53
The present invention relates to a method for converting a three-
dimensional digital model of the spatial object of sheet material and can
be applied to study the three-dimensional digital models and creating
spatial objects from sheet material, which are replicas of an existing
object (a museum exhibit, sculpture and other) or freely generated
therefrom, and to scale models of movable and immovable cultural and
historical monuments, architectural buildings and tourist sites. The
method involves placing a three-dimensional digital object (1) in the
geometric shape (2) creation of shaping elements by cutting the object
plane, cutting them and their subsequent arrangement to build a spatial
object forming simultaneously two separate sites - positive and a
matrix, both of which are made of sheet material. Google translate

WIPO‘s English patent abstract
WO 14005202 The invention relates to a method for transforming a three
dimensional digital model in a space object made of sheet material. The
method allows the shape forming elements of the sheet matrix to be
permanently or temporarily fixed so that it can be used for circulation copies
or unique pieces of the space object in material. The method according to
the invention included the object is a three dimensional digital model (1),
which is brought in a geometry form (2) comprising the whole three
dimensional digital model - the positive (1) and representing its matrix (2),
whereby the outer contour of the three dimensional digital model (1),
determined by a multitude of points belonging simultaneously to the three
dimensional digital model (1) and to the geometry form (2), determines the
dividing contour (3).
54

825136
571612
328436
204589
147987
63167
44914 43031 34741 30884 29717 22938 16886 15444
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
900000
CN US JP KR EP DE RU IN CA BR AU UK FR MX
55
Patent offices offering English abstracts
94%
6%
English abstract
No English abstract
Delay can be
3 months Patent abstracts
languages
(estimated)
WIPO 2013

English patent abstracts in Espacenet
Content of the Espacenet patent database:
• > 90 million patent documents
• with searchable titles and abstracts
• only as far as an English abstract is available
English-language abstracts are available for all patent
applications from PCT minimum documentation countries
dating from 1970 onwards, in some cases even earlier.
56

English patent abstracts in Espacenet
For patent documents not originally in English and without a
corresponding document (family member) in English an
abstract may be available as a translation into English of the
original abstract.
In some cases the EPO has translated neither the title nor the
abstract into English (FR applications, DE utility models etc.).
In this case the patent document can not be found in
Espacenet using text search!
57

DE utility model without patent family
58
DE 202015004336 U
Vorrichtung zum Auftragen
zumindest eines Werkstoffes,
Extruder, 3D-Druckkopf, 3D-Drucker,
Werkzeugmaschine und
Steuereinrichtung
Espacenet

English patent abstracts
DEPATISnet
documents
DEPATISnet
families
Espacenet
families
Title 761 376 427
Abstract 1008 602 628
Titel and
Abstract
1266 711 761
59
Espacenet search for „Additive manufacturing“
compared to DEPATISnet

Patent abstracting services
• Derwent World Patent Index DWPI
• Chemical Abstract Services
• …
60

Derwent WPI
Derwent documents are created per family and consist of an
English abstract and further coding.
The process of abstracting a new invention (by specialists)
involves
• reviewing the entire document with particular emphasis on
the claimed invention
• to capture and clearly describe the invention …
61

The aim of an abstract …
• is to support post search review of search results
• is to support a rough understanding of an
invention without reading the full document
• is not primarily to support the discovery of the
document by searching the abstract text.
62

• Patent families
63

Limited copyright for patents
• Patent offices have to disclose patents to the public.
• Patent offices offer free patent databases to the public.
• Patent documents are available for free or for a just cost-
covering fee.
• But:
Patent text and figures must not be copied without citation.
64

Searching patent text for free
Fulltext availability in free patent databases
• DEPATISnet – searchable fulltext for DE documents only
• Espacenet – searchable fulltext for EP documents only
using a separate database
• Patentscope – serchable fulltext for documents from 25
offices in the official language, some in non latin script
65

Searching text using Patentscope
DEPATISnet
documents
Patentscope
documents
Title 761 633
Abstract 1008 845
Titel and Abstract 1266 1.057
Fulltext 4.079
Claims only 1.108
66
Search for „Additive manufacturing“
Patentscope content :
• > 49 million patent
documents
• from 43 patent offices
• fulltext from 25 offices,
some in non latin
script

Searching text using Patentscope
Stemming – a curse or a blessing?
Example
Searching Patentscope for „Additive Manufacturing“
Stemming activated: 14.405
Stemming disabled: 4.079
Reason
additive has the same stem as additives and additional
67

Fee based full-text patent databases
• Infoapps Sem-IP
• LexisNexis Total Patent
• Minesoft Patbase
• Questel Orbit
• SIP Invention Navigator
• Thomson Innovation
• STN
• Proquest Dialog
68
Patbase content :
• > 100 million patent
documents
• from > 100 patent offices
• fulltext from 27 offices,
some in non latin script

Searching text using Patbase
DEPATISnet
Documents
Patentscope
Documents
Patbase
Documents
Compared to
Patentscope
Title 761 633 871 + 37 %
Abstract 1008 845 1.342 + 58 %
Titel and Abstract 1266 1.057 1.565 + 48 %
Fulltext 4.079 7.234 + 77 %
Claims 1.108 2.381 + 115 %
69

DEPATISnet
Documents
Patentscope
Documents
Patbase
Documents
Patbase
Patentfamilies
Title 761 633 871 423
Abstract 1008 845 1.342 644
Titel and Abstract 1266 1.057 1.565 770
Fulltext 4.079 7.234 2.757
Claims 1.108 2.381 850
70

Searchable text available for a patent family in PatBase
71

Searchable machine translated text available in Patbase
In case of no English family member
Patbase makes available searchable
machine translations for title,
abstract and full text.

Searchable machine translated text available in Patbase
DE 201520004336 U – Description – Machine translation
DE 201520004336 U – Description

Agenda
74

Machine translation
An often told story about machine translating
a well known saying:
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
The vodka is great, but the meat is lousy.
This story is not true!
75
Machine translated into Russian
and back again

Machine translation
A translation machine can not understand the meaning of a
text, e.g. when translating this sentence:
• English
There are seven words in this sentence.
• German
Es gibt sieben Wörter in diesem Satz.
• France
Il y a sept mots dans cette phrase.
76

Some basics on machine translation
Mainly there are these approaches
• Rule-Based Machine Translation
“is like breaking a secret office’s secret code”
• Statistical Machine Translation
“an electronic bulldozer allowed to steal
other people’s work”
• Hybrid Machine translation
Something inbetween
77
Quotes from David Bellos‘ book

Rule-Based Machine Translation
An approach based on linguistic information about
source and target languages basically retrieved from
dictionaries and grammars covering the main semantic,
morphological, and syntactic regularities of each language
respectively.
Example: JPO translation machine
78

„OCR Technologies and machine translation“ by Keiji Asano, HATSUMEI‐TSUSHIN Co.,Ltd. EPO EMW 2014
at the Japanese patent office

„OCR Technologies and machine translation“ by Keiji Asano, HATSUMEI‐TSUSHIN Co.,Ltd. EPO EMW 2014

Statistical machine translation
This approach works by detecting patterns in hundreds of
millions of documents that have previously been translated
by humans and making intelligent guesses based on the
findings.
Example: Google translate
81

http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=uwe_muegge

Machine translation at the EPO
MT is more than ever necessary for global patent
documentation:
• Volume of patent collections grows; systematic manual
translation is not an option anymore
• Machine Translation provides multi-lingual access to patent
documents
• Support for all EPO member state languages, as well as
Asian and Russian languages
• Service offered for free to users of Espacenet and
European publication server
83
Source: Auke Hoekstra, European Patent Office EPO East Meets West 2014

Machine translation specialised on patents
The EPO on Google translate in Espacenet
The cooperation with Google […] has already led to a
significant improvement in the quality of the machine
translation of patents.
This was achieved by the introduction of several hundred
thousand high quality translations of patents in the languages
provided by the EPO, which Google used to ‘train' its Google
translate system.
84

It takes a statistical approach,
comparing the source document sentence by sentence to
millions of patent documents previously translated by
humans.
The final translation profits from this "previous learning"
by the translation engine.
85

We know that confidentiality is crucial for users of
information provided by the EPO,
so our agreement with Google ensures that nobody has
access to information about your searches or translations.
86

Englisch
Deutsch
Französisch
Languages using
non latin script
Quelle: EPO 2014
Espacenet machine translation
patenttranslate for 32 languages

Patentscope machine translation
Patentscope allows for translation
• of titles and abstracts in the
result list
• of full text of description or claims
Patentscope offers
a choice of
translation machines

WIPO Translate
is a statistical machine translation tool that was developed
in-house. It can translate any patent document from and
to 14 different language pairs:
English  Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean,
Russian, Spanish and vice versa
89

Patentscope
result list
90

Patentscope
result list
translation
91

Patentscope
full text
translation
92

Patentscope
full text
translation
93
While Patentscope‘s translation
machine works on the fly you
can monitor the progress of text
transformation.

Translation machines work on the fly
• In free patent databases machine translated text is not
stored and indexed.
• It is generated again and again on request.
• This is why machine translated text is not searchable
using free patent databases.
• This is different for fee based patent databases.
94

How Patbase machine translation works
• PatBase stores English machine translations for Japanese,
Chinese, Korean, Russian and Thai text.
• When clicking on the non-Latin full-text link, where available
the original text and the stored machine translation will be
displayed side by side for easier comparison of the text.
• There is also the option to translate non-Latin full text again
on the fly to profit from eventual improvements of the
translation machine.
95

Machine translated text available in PatBase
96

There is also the option to translate non-Latin full text
again on the fly to profit from eventual improvements
of the translation machine.

How Patbase machine translation works
• For some languages (CN, KR, JP, RU. TH) the translated
text is indexed and thus available for searching in English.
99

DEPATISnet
Documents
Patentscope
Documents
Patbase
Documents
Patbase
Documents
Title 761 633 871 Searching the
stored machine
translations in
English
Abstract 1008 845 1.342
Titel and Abstract 1266 1.057 1.565
Fulltext 4.079 7.234
14.541 documents,
13.024 additional
Claims 1.108 2.381
100

Machine translated text searched in PatBase
101
Example CN104802412

Agenda
102

What is crosslanguage searching?
Searching a multilingual text corpus with a
multilingual search query
Suitable terms can be selected from various sources:
• Translation machines like Google translate
• Dictionaries
• Thesauri (with foreign language synonyms)
• Terminology
103

Search terms in foreign languages
104
Now copy and paste the translated term to the search mask
of the database suited for searching non latin script.

WIPO Pearl – a multilingual terminology
Mterminology portal built up by specialists in a controlled
process and comprising
• 29 subject fields
• 16.000 technical concepts
• 105.000 terms offered in up to ten languages:
• English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese
• Japanese, Chinese, Korean
• Russian, Arabic
www.wipo.int/reference/en/wipopearl/

Concept Map presenting 29 subject fields
Mouse over gives the complete
title of the field and the number
of concepts therein
http://www.wipo.int/reference/en/wipopearl

Subject field Manufacturing
and product handling
with its 17 Subfields
Again mouse over gives
the complete title of a
subfield and the number
of concepts therein.

Concept map with 66 concepts and relations
108

Concept maps available in up to ten languages
109
DE
ES

Detailed information about each concept and its
synonyms for all available languages
110

Context and
comments

Google translated term
添加剂制造

Patbase
Keyword searches can be run in Chinese, Japanese, Korean,
Russian and Thai in the original language with non-Latin
characters. The non-Latin search tool is useful to identify
documents via searching for non-Latin keywords, which might
be missed by an exclusively English keyword-search.
There is a Term Translator tool (powered by WIPO CLIR)
within the Non-Latin search form.
114

Patbase
Non-Latin
search
115

DEPATISnet
Documents
Patentscope
Documents
Patbase
Documents
Patbase
Documents
Title 761 633 871 Searching the
full text in non latin
script
(CN, JP, KR, RU, TH)
Abstract 1008 845 1.342
Titel and Abstract 1266 1.057 1.565
Fulltext 4.079 7.234
6.817 documents,
6.085 additional
Claims 1.108 2.381
116

Patbase
Documents
Patbase
Documents
Patbase
Documents
Title 871
Searching the stored
machine translations
in English
Searching the
full text in non latin
script
(CN, JP, KR, RU, TH)
Abstract 1.342
Titel and Abstract 1.565
Fulltext 7.234
14.541 documents,
13.024 additional
6.817 documents,
6.085 additional
Fulltext total Total: 24.520
117

Patbase Results for a search in Chinese
118
Example CN104802412

WIPO CLIR
CLIR stands for Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval.
CLIR is available in 13 languages:
English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese,
Russian, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Dutch
119

WIPO CLIR
• CLIR is a tool that can propose synonyms for keywords
you enter.
• It can also translate your original input and the generated
synonyms into 12 other languages.
• It can automatically search your collection of terms,
synonyms and translations.
120

WIPO CLIR
There is an option to finetune the search query CLIR will
develop before usage (Expansion mode: supervised)
• Select technical fields
• Select proposed synonyms
• Specify proximity
• Choose languages
• Choose text elements to be searched (TI, AB, DE, CL)
121

Patentscope CLIR – Search string part 1
ALLTXT:
(JA_TI:("添加製造"~2 OR "アディティブ製造"~2 OR "混和製造"~2 OR "添加
生産"~2 OR "アディティブ生産"~2 OR "混和生産"~2) OR JA_AB:("添加製造
"~2 OR "アディティブ製造"~2 OR "混和製造"~2 OR "添加生産"~2 OR "アディ
ティブ生産"~2 OR "混和生産"~2)) OR
123

(KO_TI:("제조 첨가제"~2 OR "제조 첨가제의"~2 OR "제조 첨가물"~2 OR "제조
코팅물로서의"~2 OR "제조 첨가"~2 OR "제조 첨가재료"~2 OR "생산 첨가제"~2
OR "제조방법 첨가제"~2 OR "생산 첨가제의"~2 OR "생산 첨가물"~2 OR
"제조방법 첨가제의"~2 OR "생산 코팅물로서의"~2 OR "제조방법 첨가물"~2 OR
"제조방법 코팅물로서의"~2) OR KO_AB:("제조 첨가제"~2 OR "제조 첨가제의"~2
OR "제조 첨가물"~2 OR "제조 코팅물로서의"~2 OR "제조 첨가"~2 OR "제조
첨가재료"~2 OR "생산 첨가제"~2 OR "제조방법 첨가제"~2 OR "생산
첨가제의"~2 OR "생산 첨가물"~2 OR "제조방법 첨가제의"~2 OR "생산
코팅물로서의"~2 OR "제조방법 첨가물"~2 OR "제조방법 코팅물로서의"~2)) OR
124

(ZH_TI:("外加剂制造"~2 OR "附加制造"~2 OR "添加制造"~2 OR "助剂制造"~2
OR "外加剂生产"~2 OR "附加生产"~2 OR "添加生产"~2 OR "助剂生产"~2 OR
"外加剂制作"~2 OR "附加制作"~2 OR "添加制作"~2 OR "助剂制作"~2) OR
ZH_AB:("外加剂制造"~2 OR "附加制造"~2 OR "添加制造"~2 OR "助剂制造"~2
OR "外加剂生产"~2 OR "附加生产"~2 OR "添加生产"~2 OR "助剂生产"~2 OR
"外加剂制作"~2 OR "附加制作"~2 OR "添加制作"~2 OR "助剂制作"~2)))
 5743 documents
125

Sometimes language is not the answer
In this case the answer could be
• Thesauri and descriptors
• Codes, e.g. Derwent Manual Codes
• Patent Classification, e.g. IPC
best if integrated into the database used.
126

Derwent Manual Codes
127

IPC
128

Development of B33Y classified patent documents
Compared to full text searching:
„additive manufacturing“

Agenda
130

Non patent literature – NPL
What is it?
• Scientific articles
• Books
• Standards
• Conference proceedings
• Company publications, e.g. product information
• Publications on the internet
• „Gray literature“
• …

Sources für literature searching
• Internet search engines, mostly used Google
• Google Scholar
• Abstracting services
• Citation services
• Standards databases
• …
132

Reasons for (multilingual) NPL searching
• Scientists will find publications out of the scope of their
regular spectrum of journals.
• Information specialists can identify worldwide publications
• using abstracting services or
• through the internet using machine translation
• Patent information specialists have to search for NPL to
complete novelty or FTO searches.
133

Multilingual NPL as part of patent searching
PCT Minimum Documentation – non patent literature as part
of the examiners search duty. Examples:
• Kobunshi Ronbunshu
Japanese Journal of Polymer Science and Engineering
• Korean Journal of Traditional Knowledge
• Žurnal obsej himii
Russian Journal of General Chemistry
134

Source EPO
at the EPO

http://oversea.cnki.net

Quelle: STN

Multilingual searching using Google
• Choose the searching language
• Use Google translate for applicable terms in the
selected language
• Search these terms using Google
• Use the Google toolbar option to highlight terms in the
resulting document list
• Use Google‘s webpage translation
138

Korean
Chinese, simpl.
Chinese
Japanese

Google toolbar

Google translate for search terms
141
Now copy and paste the translated term to Google.

Machine translated result page

Korean
For some languages a keyboard is available

Google scholar
• A freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full
text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of
publishing formats and disciplines.
• The Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed
online journals of Europe and America's largest scholarly
publishers, plus scholarly books and other non-peer
reviewed journals.
• Google Scholar is searchable in 13 languages.
144
WIKIPEDIA 12.10.15

Google scholar
• While Google does not publish the size of Google Scholar's
database. Third-party researchers estimated it to contain
roughly 160 million documents as of May 2014.
• Google Scholar also resembles the subscription-based
tools, Elsevier's Scopus and Thomson Reuters' Web of
Science.
145
WIKIPEDIA 12.10.15

Origin of literature
146

Using Google Scholar in English

Using Google Scholar in Chinese
with highlighting and machine translation

Multilingual NPL abstracting services
Abstracts written by specialists
• CAS (NPL and patents)
• Medline
• Inspec
• …
149

503
8780 26119
90496
266915
515502
31286 23547 19189 26128
37355 34123
0
200000
400000
600000
800000
1000000
1200000
1974 1984 1994 2004 2009 2014
Development of CAS content (NPL and patents)
in different languages
English Chinese German French Russian
150

Mulitligual searching using language tools
• Terminology
• Thesaurus
• Taxonomy
• Ontology
• Classification
151

WIPO Pearl – terminology available in up to
ten languages
152
DE
ES

Thesaurus
153
• A reference work that lists words grouped together
according to similarity of meaning (containing synonyms
and sometimes antonyms).
• A thesaurus may contain foreign language synonyms.
• This in contrast to a dictionary, which provides definitions
for words, and generally lists them in alphabetical order.
Source: Wikipedia

INSPEC – Content
Multidisciplinary Database
• Physics
• Electrical & Electronics Engineering
• Manufacturing, Production & Mechanical
Engineering
• Computing & Control Engineering
• Information Technology
154

INSPEC – Content
• more than 15 million records
• from 1898 to date
• > 3,800 journals
• other publications: conference proceedings,
books, reports, dissertations, patents
155

Inspec Thesaurus – Selected items
156
BT Broader term
TT Top term
NT Narrower term
RT Related term

INSPEC documents in non-English languages
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Chinese Japanese German Russian
157
Plus >5000 documents in English

Sources für literature searching
• Internet search engines, mostly used Google
• Google Scholar
• Abstracting services
• Citation services
• Standards databases
• …
158

Asian Science Citation Index – ASCI
is committed to provide an authoritative, trusted and
significant information by the coverage of the most
important and influential journals
http://ascidatabase.com
159

„Asian Documentation &
Patents and Standards:
an update” 2015
by Niclas Morey, EPO

Agenda
161

The future
• What will propably not become reality?
• What can we expect?
• What will come next?
• What is quiet far away?
• What is really far away?
162

What will propably not become reality?
„I would like to see patent offices and others
writing patent abstracts using a thesaurus
with recommended wording and spelling,
which would suggest the „right“ word
if a variant was used.“
Stephen van Dulken 2014
163

The future – What can we expect?
Joining search tools with language tools like thesauruses,
taxonomies, ontologies etc.
• This works nearly perfectly for patent classification in
patent databases.
• This works well for thesauri in some databases, e.g.
INSPEC
• This has to be enabled for further systems,
e.g. a combination of Patentscope and Pearl

What will come next?
• WIPO:
Further patent offices‘ documents, data and fulltext will be
included.
• EPO:
Full text search for some patent offices‘ documents is
announced.
• More databases with searchable machine translated text
• Increasing user acceptance of machine translated text to
justify further developing efforts and funding
165

What is quiet far away?
• Better automatic processing of linguistic
constructions, especially for Asian languages
• Multilingual access to non-textual documents, e.g.
images, videos, etc.
166

What is really far away?
A change of THE global language?
Will English be the Lingua Franca of the future?
Other languages fell back that were important once:
• Latin – as the universal language in medieval times
• French – the language of politics and diplomacy of the 18th
and 19th century
• German – the language of science until recently
• Esperanto – never really made it
167

Thank you for listening!
Contact:
WissensWert Seminare – Beratung
Dr. Gabriele Kirch-Verfuß
g.kirch-verfuss@wissenswert-wm.de
T: +49-2361-9040-273
www.wissenswert-wm.de
Subscribe to our newsletter: info@wissenswert-wm.de

Literature – books
• Peters, Carol, Braschler, Martin, Clough, Paul:
Multilingual Information Retrieval
Springer 2012
• David Bellos: Is That a Fish in Your Ear?
Faber & Faber; Reprint 2012
169

Literature – journal articles
• Stephen van Dulken: Do you know English? The
challenge of the English language for patent searchers
World Patent Information, 2014, vol. 39, pages 35-40
• Stephen Adams: The text, the full text and nothing but the
text: Part 1
• Stephen Adams: The text, the full text and nothing but the
text: Part 2
170

Mind the language gap! Multilingual Searching in Practice

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