Anyone that has litigated a patent that was originally written in a language other than English has almost certainly dealt with translation issues. For that matter, anyone that has used foreign language prior art or technical documents has likely faced translation issues. The new PatLit blog has an interesting post about translation issues related to a European patent litigation — click here to read the post. A PatLit reader suggests that there are few written opinions dealing with translation issues, but that translation issues must be common. My experience is that the complexity and frequency of translation issues are directly related to the complexity of the technology. Not a shocking conclusion because complex, cutting-edge technology has its own terminology that often does not lend itself to seamless translation. The fact that there are not many written opinions makes less sense. But here are a few possible explanations: 1) courts treat translation issues as any other difference of opinion in claim constructions and deal with them without mentioning the translations; or 2) cases that suffer from unclear or bad translations may be more likely to settle before a decision.