In a 361-page joint filing late Friday Apple and Samsung laid out their respective objections to the opposing party’s preliminary jury instructions for the upcoming district court patent trial scheduled for the end of July.

The disputed proposed jury instructions cover a host of procedural necessities regarding juror handling and includes operating minutiae down to when an instruction can be given and how said instruction is phrased. Many objections are based on unnecessary verbiage or when an instruction should be given, though some call race into contention and illustrate the implications of trying an international patent case in the U.S.

Samsung is worried about how a jury may perceive a supporting witness’s ethnicity as seen in the South Korean company’s juror questionnaire and has extended that concern to jury instructions.

For example, Samsung disputes Apple’s proposed reading of the following when the first foreign speaker testifies:

Languages other than English may be used during this trial. One such language will be Korean.

The evidence to be considered by you is only that provided through the official court translators. Although some of you may know Korean, it is important that all jurors consider the same evidence. Therefore, you must accept the English translation. You must disregard any different meaning.

In objection, the Galaxy maker claims that the “proposal will disrupt the trial and unnecessarily call attention to the witness’ ethnicity.” The company is looking to remove any relation of ethnicity and expert testimony during the trial and wants to keep the issue of race out of the proceedings completely.

Samsung’s proposed instruction reads almost identically to Apple’s, though “Korean” has been removed from the leading sentence:

Languages other than English may be used during this trial.

Witnesses who do not speak English or are more proficient in another language testify through an official court interpreter. Although some of you may know, for example, Korean, it is important that all jurors consider the same evidence. Therefore, you must accept the interpreter’s translation of the witness’s testimony. You must disregard any different meaning.

At issue is the interpretation of testimony given by Korean-speaking experts by a Korean-speaking juror who may form a different translation than the one given by a court interpreter.

While most of the parties’ objections are par for the course, some call into question the interpretation of certain trade and patent laws which are instrumental in trying a case regarding such issues. An example is Samsung’s proposed design patent summary which states “[a] ‘design patent’ protects the way an article looks, but not the way it functions.” Apple takes issue with this statement, asserting that the “instruction is misleading because design patents protect articles of manufacture that have or serve a function, so long as the overall design of the article is not “dictated by function.” Similar objections are seen throughout the document.

Presiding Judge Lucy Koh will take the proposed instructions into consideration and may request an updated pared-down set this week. Another option would be to hold judgment until the pretrial conference scheduled in which case the parties would have to make dynamic adjustments during the trial.

The Apple v. Samsung jury trial is slated to begin with juror selection on July 30.

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Despite an increasing number of Chinese people who are able to converse in English thanks to the nation’s growing exchanges with the world and the spread of higher education, professional translators and interpreters who can work with English and Chinese still fall short of demand.

The translation market in China was worth about 30 billion yuan ($4.72 billion) in 2008 and expected to grow at an annual rate of 30 percent, according to the Translators Association of China.

In order to satisfy market demand for high quality translators and fully develop the translation sector, Chinese educational authorities approved 40 leading universities to set up special training programs for professional translators in 2009.

However, only a small number of the graduates from these programs are now working as professional translators after finishing their two-year study despite holding a master’s degree in translation and interpretation, said Mu Lei, a senior professor at the School of Interpreting and Translation of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. She was speaking at the China Translation Profession Forum in Beijing on Saturday.

Most of the graduates succeed in landing good jobs at government agencies and well-known multinationals thanks to their training as professional translators, Mu added.

Compared to student translators and interpreters from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, mainland Chinese students excel at language skills but lack interpersonal skills, which prevents them from becoming successful professional translators, according to Wang Lidi, dean of the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU).

After decades of fast economic development, China is now stepping up its cultural exchanges with other countries, in the process of which translators have a crucial role to play, said Zhao Haiyun, head of the international division of the General Administration of Press and Publication.

Another side of the coin

Unlike in China, where a large number of people want to become translators and interpreters, most English-speaking countries and regions such as the EU have far fewer people willing to take part in translation training programs and even fewer ready to learn the extremely difficult language of Chinese.

Globally speaking, there are fewer than 10 qualified interpreters whose mother tongue is English and who can translate between English and Chinese, according to William White, an experienced freelance interpreter who used to work for the Delegation of the European Union to China.

White is now based in Beijing, and his daily fee has been increasing at an annual rate of about 10 percent in recent years thanks to the tight market. “In peak seasons like April and September, it’s really hard to find professional interpreters, as there are many international conferences and qualified interpreters are all occupied.”

Read original story on ChinaDaily.com

By Caroline Tan, NBCLosAngeles.com

WALNUT, Calif. — For Walnut residents who do not speak English, participating in City Council meetings and addressing local officials may soon become more difficult.

Council members voted 5-0 this week to postpone a decision on a proposal that would ask non-English speakers to provide their own interpreters for all Council proceedings, which would be conducted only in English.

But the prospect of English-only public meetings remains a distinct possibility. A vote may happen later this month, when the council is scheduled to meet again on July 25

Though a formal decision has yet to be made, the proposed English-only policy has already raised concerns among some local residents, who fear the move would violate civil rights and unfairly disadvantage a portion of the population.

Nearly two-thirds of Walnut’s residents and three of the five council members are Asian.

The proposal comes at the helm of decades of similar policies targeting the growing immigrant population in nearby cities in the San Gabriel Valley, which has transitioned from a predominantly Caucasian collection of suburbs into a center of Asian culture in Southern California.

The English-only proposal was brought to the council by local resident Wendy Barend Toy, who said she could not understand several commenters who spoke Chinese when addressing the council.

On Wednesday, the council voted to seek federal review from the U.S. Department of Justice before making a decision on the proposal.

Daisy Duan, 27, a graduate student at the University of Southern California who speaks limited English, said in Chinese that the proposal would “definitely” affect her ability to participate in local politics.

“I feel like English is still very difficult,” Duan said. “I know many first-generation immigrants who, when they came to America, could not speak even a single word … It’s not fair.”

Duan added that she thinks the proposal is particularly problematic in California, which has a higher proportion of immigrants than any other state.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Asians represented nearly 64 percent of Walnut’s population. Whites accounted for about 24 percent, and blacks for nearly 3 percent, with the remaining residents from other races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race represented about 19 percent of the population.

Walnut Councilman Tom King said Friday that the city simply can not afford to hire an interpreter for every meeting. He supports the idea of English-only meetings but has reservations about specifics in the proposal.

King said it is uncommon for residents to address the council in a language other than English, so the demand for an interpreter does not justify the costs.

“It would be a financial restriction and waste of money,” King said.

He added that the last time a resident spoke to the council in a language other than English was when a Mandarin-speaking resident came to the podium in April.

Still, King said the council hopes to represent all voices and has considered alternative solutions.

“Nobody wants to disenfranchise anybody,” King said. “It’s just that our meetings are held in English, and we have someone record the meetings in English, and if they speak [a different language], their remarks are not understood.”

King said he has suggested that the Council create a “standby volunteer interpreter list” to provide language support.

But Sissy Trinh, an active member of local advocacy group Southeast Asian Community Alliance, said she has noticed that similar initiatives in other cities ended up as “abysmal” failures. Translation is a mentally exhausting activity and volunteer help can be unreliable, she added.

“You have to assume that people can take that time off and that they’re willing to,” Trinh said. “You don’t know what the quality [of translation] is, and I’ve heard of cases where people are brought in to translate and end up speaking the wrong dialect.”

Trinh added that she considered the proposal a “civil rights violation” that “definitely doesn’t build trust with government officials.”

But King said he was not worried about volunteer recruitment. There are many bilingual students in the region who are eager to give back to their community, he said.

Austin Yuan, 25, a first generation immigrant who is fluent in English, said he could understand the motives behind the proposal.

“As a citizen, you have to understand that perhaps it’s not just the responsibility of the government to just serve you,” Yuan said. “They have to look at everyone.”

Still, Yuan said he sympathized with citizens who do not speak English and feel they are being “cheated out of their tax money.”

The legal debate will likely come down to an “access issue” for those who do not speak English, according to Los Angeles-based civil rights attorney Lisa Maki.

She said it’s a complicated issue, but added that developing a volunteer interpreter datase will likely help the city of Walnut avoid legal problems.

The Council is expected to vote on the matter later this month, pending input from the U.S. Department of Justice on any civil rights or legal issues associated with the proposal.

Read original story on NBCLosAngeles.com

Samsung Electronics Co., Inc. won for the first time in the series of patent litigations against Apple. The Hague court of the Netherlands sentenced on June 20 that iPhone 4 and iPad 2 infringed upon one patent of Samsung in 3G wireless communication.
The court found that Apple infringed upon Samsung’s patent on “the method of symbolizing the signal to reduce the errors in transmission of control information signals.”
However the court did not find infringement on the new mobile devices such as iPhone 4S with Qualcomm chip set and the new iPad.
The patent lawsuits started in April in the U.S. and which are currently pending in about 30 courts in 9 countries.
LA Translation has provided the translation of more than one million words of patents from Korean to English related to Samsung and Apple and will continue to make its best efforts to provide accurate translation for both sides.

Korean Air lost in translation

2012-06-19 08:57

Nairobi, Kenya – When Korean Air announced its non-stop flights from Korea to Kenya on Monday, it posted a notice on its website describing Kenyans as indigenous people full of “primitive energy”, sparking a flurry of angry Tweets and Facebook postings.

Head of Public Relations for Korean Air in Kenya, Muthui Kariuki said that the notice had been removed from the website and that the word “primitive” was a result of a mistake in translation from Korean to English. Kariuki said the airline, which is supposed to launch the thrice-weekly flights on Thursday, will post an apology.

According to reports on Huffington Post, Kenyans expressed their anger on social media.

“An insult to a nation. Kenya doesn’t have primitive people,” posted a Twitter user who identified himself as George Njoro.

Kenya is a regional hub where passengers can connect to flights to other countries in the region and in Africa.

It is said that a Multinational corporation like KAL didn’t bother to have a professional Korean into Engish translation.  Just one word can make a big difference, so we need a professionally trained Korean translator

 especially in advertisements.  Translation requires cultural sensitivity as well.