Foreign Language Discovery

[SendDoc]

Often, discovery involves documents that are not in English. Similarly, electronically stored information may be multilingual, especially in large corporate litigation involving documents from various nations.

I am trying to identify the challenges involved with multilingual e-discovery and the methods for approaching such challenges. Does anyone have any information on foreign language e-discovery for United States litigation?

[ESI Attorney]

Kroll Ontrack published a great whitepaper on this topic. You will find the "Multilingual E-Disclosure: Options, Obstacles and Opportunities Report" in PDF form or available for download on this page.

[LPD]

Is there a way for vendors to weed out the junk without first translating? The general consensus (at least in foreign language legal circles), is that the automatic translators are useless. It would greatly cut costs if potentially relevant documents could first be identified. Then, once weeded down, attorneys fluent in the foreign language should review the remaining documents. English-speaking attorneys reviewing machine translations is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. (Try finding a machine translator that can accurately translate euphemisms.)

[David Jordan]

Good question, LPD. I'll look into that and get back to you.

[David Jordan]

Originally Posted by LPD

Is there a way for vendors to weed out the junk without first translating? The general consensus (at least in foreign language legal circles), is that the automatic translators are useless. It would greatly cut costs if potentially relevant documents could first be identified. Then, once weeded down, attorneys fluent in the foreign language should review the remaining documents. English-speaking attorneys reviewing machine translations is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. (Try finding a machine translator that can accurately translate euphemisms.)

Yes, there is a way for vendors to weed out the junk without first translating. (But only a few vendors have this technology.) You can import the foreign language documents into a system that has the ability to (1) store foreign language characters and (2) search foreign language characters. Then you can run a filter/search based on your terms to filter out the information that is not relevant to your matter (i.e. "weed out the junk"). Then, once weeded down, attorneys fluent in the foreign language can review the remaining documents.

For this technology, I would suggest checking with the big e-discovery companies (like Kroll Ontrack or its international offices), since they often lead with new technologies. Another option is checking with an e-discovery company in a country that speaks the same language as your foreign language documents, since they are likely to have the technology to filter that language.

[Discovery Guy]

Yes, there is a way for vendors to weed out the junk without first translating. (But only a few vendors have this technology.) You can import the foreign language documents into a system that has the ability to (1) store foreign language characters and (2) search foreign language characters. Then you can run a filter/search based on your terms to filter out the information that is not relevant to your matter (i.e. "weed out the junk"). Then, once weeded down, attorneys fluent in the foreign language can review the remaining documents.

This is correct. Deloitte Discovery has this capability which I have used before. They are particularly good in Asian languages but also good in eastern and western european languages as well.

[Roach]

Autonomy has a great solution for this...