Prosecution Insights
Last updated: October 02, 2026
Application No. 19/023,068

TRANSLATION METHOD AND RELATED DEVICE

Non-Final OA §103
Filed
Jan 15, 2025
Priority
Sep 15, 2022 — CN 202211123598.4 +2 more
Examiner
AZAD, ABUL K
Art Unit
Tech Center
Assignee
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
86%
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds
8m
Est. Remaining
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 86% — above average
86%
Career Allowance Rate
689 granted / 806 resolved
+25.5% vs TC avg
Moderate +14% lift
Without
With
+14.0%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
2y 4m
Avg Prosecution
18 currently pending
Career history
821
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
18.4%
-21.6% vs TC avg
§103
37.8%
-2.2% vs TC avg
§102
27.4%
-12.6% vs TC avg
§112
5.4%
-34.6% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 806 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
DETAILED ACTION Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . This action is in response to the communication filed on January 15, 2025. Claims 1-15 are pending in this action. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103 The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action: A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made. Claim(s) 1-2, 6-7, and 11-12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Uramoto (US 5,844,798) in view of Yuan et al. (CN113392654A). As per claim 1, Uramoto discloses, a translation method, wherein the method comprises: obtaining a to-be-translated sentence, wherein the to-be-translated sentence comprises a polysemous word expressed in a first language (col. 8, lines18-60); determining a target semantic meaning of the polysemous word according to a disambiguation rule, wherein the disambiguation rule indicates to determine the target semantic meaning of the polysemous word by using a translation model (col. 8, lines 18-col. 9, line 38); determining a translation result of the to-be-translated sentence based on the target semantic meaning, wherein the translation result comprises content whose target semantic meaning is expressed in a second language, and the first language is different from the second language (Abstract). Uramoto does not explicitly disclose, but Yuan discloses, the translation model may perform data processing on a word vector sequence corresponding to the to-be-translated sentence to obtain the semantic meaning of the polysemous word in the to-be-translated sentence, the translation model is obtained by training a parallel training sentence pair, and both training sentences in the parallel training sentence pair are the first language (Paragraphs 22-50). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Uramoto by including processing on a word vector sequence and the parallel training sentence pair as taught by Yuan for the advantage of solve the problem of wrong translation of the multi-meaning words of the neural machine translation model, but also effectively process the problem that the same word corresponds to different meaning or different translation outputs in sentences with different writing types (Abstract). As per claim 2, Uramoto does not explicitly disclose, but Yuan discloses, wherein the translation model comprises a first encoder, and the disambiguation rule indicates a manner of determining the target semantic meaning of the polysemous word by using the first encoder (claim 1). As per claims 6-7 and 11-12, they are analyzed and thus rejected for the same reasons set forth in the rejections of claims 1-2, because the corresponding claims have similar limitations. Claim(s) 3-5, 8-10, and 13-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Uramoto (US 5,844,798) in view of Yuan et al. (CN113392654A) as applied to claims 2, 7, and 12 above, and further in view of Qian (CN 111310475A). As per claim 3, Uramoto in view of Yuan do not explicitly disclose, but Qian discloses, wherein the parallel training sentence pair comprises a first training sentence and a second training sentence, and before the obtaining a to-be-translated sentence, the method further comprises: encoding the first training sentence to obtain a first training encoding vector; encoding the second training sentence to obtain a second training encoding vector; and obtaining the first encoder based on a first distance between the first training encoding vector and the second training encoding vector, wherein a semantic meaning represented by the first training sentence and a semantic meaning represented by the second training sentence are the same (Paragraphs 66-137). As per claim 4, Uramoto in view of Yuan do not explicitly disclose, but Qian discloses, wherein the parallel training sentence pair comprises a third training sentence and a reference sentence, and before the obtaining a to-be- translated sentence, the method further comprises: encoding the third training sentence to obtain a third training encoding vector, wherein the third training encoding vector comprises a first polysemous word encoding vector of a training polysemous word; encoding the second training sentence to obtain a reference encoding vector, wherein the reference encoding vector comprises a second polysemous word encoding vector of the training polysemous word; and obtaining the first encoder based on a second distance between the first polysemous word encoding vector and the second polysemous word encoding vector (Paragraphs 66-137). As per claim 3, Uramoto in view of Yuan do not explicitly disclose, but Qian discloses, wherein a semantic meaning of the training polysemous word in the third training sentence is the same as or similar to that in the reference sentence, and the first encoder is obtained by reducing the second distance; or a semantic meaning of the training polysemous word in the third training sentence is different from that in the reference sentence, and the first encoder is obtained by increasing the second distance (Paragraphs 66-137). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Uramoto in view of Yuan by obtaining the first encoder based on a first distance between the first training encoding vector and the second training encoding vector as taught by Qian for the advantage of provides a training and a device of a word sense disambiguation model (Abstract). As per claims 8-10 and 13-15, they are analyzed and thus rejected for the same reasons set forth in the rejections of claims 3-5, because the corresponding claims have similar limitations. Conclusion The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Zhang et al. (US 2023/0095352) discloses, translation method, apparatus and storage medium based on a polysemous word in a source language corresponding to a sentence to be translated and a plurality of translated words corresponding to the polysemous word in a target language. Chen et al. (US 11,138,392) discloses, machine translation using neural network models. Contact Information Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Abul K. Azad whose telephone number is (571) 272-7599. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Bhavesh Mehta, can be reached at (571) 272-7453. Any response to this action should be mailed to: Commissioner for Patents P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, VA 22313-1450 Or faxed to: (571) 273-8300. Hand-delivered responses should be brought to 401 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA-22314 (Customer Service Window). Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). August 17, 2026 /ABUL K AZAD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2656
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Jan 15, 2025
Application Filed
Aug 19, 2026
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §103 (current)

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Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
86%
Grant Probability
99%
With Interview (+14.0%)
2y 4m (~8m remaining)
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 806 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allowance rate.

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