Lawsuits with international parties are complicated at best, and review of defense-side document productions involving substantial volumes of electronically stored information (ESI) is also complicated and always expensive. Try to solve these two combined challenges by using traditional methodologies—and you will be in for quite a ride! The answer is not traditional, but if you step outside the box, you will see the obvious answer for efficient plaintiff eDiscovery review is a combination of technology and triage.
The Two Technologies? Artificial Intelligence (AI) for automated issue coding and Enhanced Machine Translation (EMT).
The Triage
Step 1: Use AI software for automated issue coding to first reduce the defense production to only those documents that are relevant to plaintiffs’ case theme issues. Now you are down to less than 10 percent of the defense production.
Step 2: Use EMT to translate only those issue relevant documents to help find and distinguish your “hot documents.”
Step 3: Conduct human review of the EMT translated documents.
Step 4: Human Linguists review and translate only the hot documents.
AI-Based Issue Coding for Cross Lingual Documents
Automated issue coding is especially important in cases with hefty defense productions, as it allows counsel to pinpoint documents important to the plaintiffs’ objectives quickly, so they do not waste time sifting through irrelevant information. The use of cutting-edge high technologies ensures higher accuracy than human document review in a fraction of the time and cost.
Enhanced Machine Translations Using Artificial Intelligence
Computers are able to translate text much faster than humans, and with the voluminous documents involved in MDL and class action lawsuits, machine language translations are a must. Machine translations that rely solely on standard dictionary-based algorithms do not cut it, however. Such translations tend to contain nonsensical English, because dictionary-based algorithms cannot account for the nuances of localized idiomatic expressions. Fortunately, eDiscovery experts have solved that problem by using artificial intelligence (AI).
Artificial intelligence algorithms have revolutionized machine translation by comparing human-translated documents against the original text. These algorithms allow for the incorporation of idioms into machine translations. Combining AI algorithms with dictionary algorithms produces exceptionally accurate foreign language to English machine translations and marks a huge step forward in translation technology. By working with machine translation, attorneys can significantly speed up the document review process in international cases.
Other Foreign Language Services
Efficient plaintiff electronic discovery services use specialized language software to perform cross-lingual searching. The software will search not only for the chosen term, but also for similar concepts. For example, a search for “LCD” will locate references to liquid crystal display, electro-optical amplitude modulator, flat screen device and flat screen monitor, as well as similar terms and concepts in foreign languages.
Additionally, other foreign language services available include:
- Providing one-sentence summaries and paragraph-long abstracts of foreign documents
- Performing comprehensive human translations
- Conducting and defend depositions outside the U.S.
- Assisting with selecting and vetting interpreters for witnesses
- Performing cross-lingual issue coding
To learn more about the extensive international language services available, contact us for a free consultation.