1) Do you currently translate for any auto companies with portfolios greater than 300 cases per year?
I have several established clients in IP industry, such as law firms in Europe & USA. But they do not have documents to be translated in such large scale.
Fortunately, We have taken more than 5000 cases each year for a major translation company in Europe from 2010. Meanwhile, we also involved in project management for one of the largest translation firm in Russia. But nothing relates to patent. Both of them have legal documents, technical manuals or marketing documents to be translated regularly. With this experiences, we mastered know-how in dealing with cases at scale.
2) How would you handle 150+ translations per month? How many in house people will you have working on it? How many freelancers?
Firstly, we have a project manager, whose routine duties includes controlling of project, which seems to be casual and very urgent. For instance, a project from HP & EA with 100 words has to be translated/reviewed into all languages (normally 18 languages) in only about 4 hours. In order to meet such requirements, we have established an efficient process for project managing, including docketing, preparing Work Order, Project Order & invoicing.
Secondly, 150+ patents shall not be regarded a serious problem, because each in-house attorney can finish at least 150k words in a month.
150 patents with ca. 6k words each = 900k words
900k/150k = 6 attorneys
That is, we need 6 experienced in-house attorneys plus 6 experienced technical translators, which we already have. Of course, we would hire more in-house attorneys & translators, if we have your projects at scale in sights.
Thirdly, we have only two freelancers currently in use.
One is a Taiwanese, she works for us as freelancer because of family reason from 2007. From then on, she have taken job from my team/firm almost every day.
The other is a professional attorney, who is an old-fashion patent examiner & attorney and get retired from Chinese Patent Office. Every month, he translate at least 5 or 10 patent for my firm from 2010.
Of course, there are still several optional freelancers in my watch-list. Most of them are Chinese patent attorneys living in Beijing, several are my former colleagues from the same renowned Chinese law firm. At least three of them already worked for my projects in last several years temporarily.
Anyway, freelancer will never play an important role in my firm, because we have enough resources to train a new attorney in only two years and it is believed that only in-house translators/attorneys can understand what I need. Quality can only be controlled by my people, not by any freelancer.
3) If they want to run a test I need to be certain you can handle the volume of work. One thing I am concerned about your firm is the size of it. How large is it? - Do you have a website?
Currently, we are not a large-size company, but we still have more than 20 staff members located in Hong Kong, Beijing and Chengdu.
I am very proud that every in-house attorney is chosen and trained by my hand, soon after they left their universities. For the time being, most of them are already passed China State Examination for Patent Attorney. Since they all learn Chinese patent law and patent & technical translation together under my control, they know our rules, our process and also each other very well. Of course, I know them also very well. Only with this special "family" team, I can ensure the quality, just as all done by myself. Therefore, we can finish projects always in the same quality and very efficiently. No single client complained about the quality, for both translation & patent prosecution, and no single client left my firm since 2010 because of quality.
You may visit my website: www.ipzhixin.com.
4) What levels of quality control are in place?
Once having any orders from IP clients, our PM will check the files in format and integrity. If something is missing or blurred, our PM will contact clients immediately to confirm the details.
Only when a deadline is reasonable and all documents including claim set, description and figures are ready to be translated, our confirmation will be provided via email. At the same day, a work order will be created and then, our technical translator will start with the translation. If nothing in figures shall be translated, our technical designer will prepare the figures at the same time. Meanwhile, our QA team and attorneys will be notified about the possible timeline.
Our work process in summary:
S1) Translation done by one patent attorney or patent translators; Preparing figures.
S2) 1st proofreading by another in-house patent attorney, wherein the patent to be checked will be printed in paper and will be revised word by word.
S3) 2nd review by myself, wherein claim set will always be checked word by word and by myself.
S4) QA process with help of CAT-Tools; Formatting segment by segment.
S5) Checking instruction letter once again before final delivery.
It is believed that quality can only be controlled, if an established process are followed by a stable team. That is just what we prepared in last years.
5) Do you have someone in house that can format the drawings?
Sure, I have a technical designer for preparing drawings, such as Adobe Acrobat, CAD, FrameMaker, InDeisign.
I have several established clients in IP industry, such as law firms in Europe & USA. But they do not have documents to be translated in such large scale.
Fortunately, We have taken more than 5000 cases each year for a major translation company in Europe from 2010. Meanwhile, we also involved in project management for one of the largest translation firm in Russia. But nothing relates to patent. Both of them have legal documents, technical manuals or marketing documents to be translated regularly. With this experiences, we mastered know-how in dealing with cases at scale.
2) How would you handle 150+ translations per month? How many in house people will you have working on it? How many freelancers?
Firstly, we have a project manager, whose routine duties includes controlling of project, which seems to be casual and very urgent. For instance, a project from HP & EA with 100 words has to be translated/reviewed into all languages (normally 18 languages) in only about 4 hours. In order to meet such requirements, we have established an efficient process for project managing, including docketing, preparing Work Order, Project Order & invoicing.
Secondly, 150+ patents shall not be regarded a serious problem, because each in-house attorney can finish at least 150k words in a month.
150 patents with ca. 6k words each = 900k words
900k/150k = 6 attorneys
That is, we need 6 experienced in-house attorneys plus 6 experienced technical translators, which we already have. Of course, we would hire more in-house attorneys & translators, if we have your projects at scale in sights.
Thirdly, we have only two freelancers currently in use.
One is a Taiwanese, she works for us as freelancer because of family reason from 2007. From then on, she have taken job from my team/firm almost every day.
The other is a professional attorney, who is an old-fashion patent examiner & attorney and get retired from Chinese Patent Office. Every month, he translate at least 5 or 10 patent for my firm from 2010.
Of course, there are still several optional freelancers in my watch-list. Most of them are Chinese patent attorneys living in Beijing, several are my former colleagues from the same renowned Chinese law firm. At least three of them already worked for my projects in last several years temporarily.
Anyway, freelancer will never play an important role in my firm, because we have enough resources to train a new attorney in only two years and it is believed that only in-house translators/attorneys can understand what I need. Quality can only be controlled by my people, not by any freelancer.
3) If they want to run a test I need to be certain you can handle the volume of work. One thing I am concerned about your firm is the size of it. How large is it? - Do you have a website?
Currently, we are not a large-size company, but we still have more than 20 staff members located in Hong Kong, Beijing and Chengdu.
I am very proud that every in-house attorney is chosen and trained by my hand, soon after they left their universities. For the time being, most of them are already passed China State Examination for Patent Attorney. Since they all learn Chinese patent law and patent & technical translation together under my control, they know our rules, our process and also each other very well. Of course, I know them also very well. Only with this special "family" team, I can ensure the quality, just as all done by myself. Therefore, we can finish projects always in the same quality and very efficiently. No single client complained about the quality, for both translation & patent prosecution, and no single client left my firm since 2010 because of quality.
You may visit my website: www.ipzhixin.com.
4) What levels of quality control are in place?
Once having any orders from IP clients, our PM will check the files in format and integrity. If something is missing or blurred, our PM will contact clients immediately to confirm the details.
Only when a deadline is reasonable and all documents including claim set, description and figures are ready to be translated, our confirmation will be provided via email. At the same day, a work order will be created and then, our technical translator will start with the translation. If nothing in figures shall be translated, our technical designer will prepare the figures at the same time. Meanwhile, our QA team and attorneys will be notified about the possible timeline.
Our work process in summary:
S1) Translation done by one patent attorney or patent translators; Preparing figures.
S2) 1st proofreading by another in-house patent attorney, wherein the patent to be checked will be printed in paper and will be revised word by word.
S3) 2nd review by myself, wherein claim set will always be checked word by word and by myself.
S4) QA process with help of CAT-Tools; Formatting segment by segment.
S5) Checking instruction letter once again before final delivery.
It is believed that quality can only be controlled, if an established process are followed by a stable team. That is just what we prepared in last years.
5) Do you have someone in house that can format the drawings?
Sure, I have a technical designer for preparing drawings, such as Adobe Acrobat, CAD, FrameMaker, InDeisign.