| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Translating copyrighted material Thread poster: Ana Talos
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| A UK or European copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the creator | Jul 6, 2020 |
It's probably similar in the US. So you can translate Shakespeare or Charlotte Bronte with no worries, but not Terry Pratchett or PD James or any living author. And the publisher's details are given at the front of any book, so the best thing to do would be to contact the publisher.
| | | | | Just in case you were not speaking metaphorically... | Jul 6, 2020 |
Ana Talos wrote:  yes, true. the only reason or purpose I want to translate it is to preserve it for 500 years from now, the way Voltaire has been or Shakespeare in different languages. I think with the computer age it can be possible. What if I translate it, live another 80 years and publish it before I die? Bot me and the original writer would have been dead for more than 50 years. I can't imagine a world without the bible or Shakespeare ever have been translated due to copyrights. I'm grateful for the translators who made it available to humanity.
... the odds of any work to be of interest to anyone - besides possibly a tiny minority of historians or hardcore fans - after 80 or 500 years, let alone for it to have the cultural impact of the Bible or Shakespeare, or even Terry Pratchett, are astronomical. Translating anything for the sole purpose of its preservation sounds very much like "all toil and risk, little to no reward" sort of task. I'm sure if the work is considered literary significant at all, modern libraries and archives will do a much better job preserving it, possibly even in digital form (which, as we know, is for all intents and purposes eternal, as long as you don't let it wither away in soon-to-be-obsolete storage and file formats).
| | | | Eliza Hall
United States
Local time: 19:41
French to English
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| Copyright in translations | Aug 24, 2020 |
Sadek_A wrote:
Translating copyrighted material without permission is the same as translating non-copyrighted material. How the translation is going to be used is what decides your legal position.
That isn't true. A translation is considered a "derivative work" (overview here: https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-are-derivative-works-under-copyright-law). If you're preparing a derivative work based on something that is copyrighted -- for instance, if you're translating a book that's currently under copyright -- you need permission from the copyright holder (usually but not always the author) in order to do so.
Fair use exceptions apply, so, for instance, generally speaking a teacher could assign students to translate a paragraph or a few pages of a copyrighted book, on an exam or as homework/classwork.
And you could prepare your own translation as part of training yourself to become a translator, partly because you may have a fair-use defense to copyright infringement, and partly because in practical terms, as long as you don't sell your translation or put it online, no one will ever know that you did it.
Sadek_A wrote:
You hold the copyright to all of your translations.
But you can't do anything with your translations (seek a publisher, post them online, etc.) unless you had permission from the original author to do a translation.
Unless of course the original is already in the public domain, in which case you can do what you like.
[Edited at 2020-08-24 19:16 GMT]
| | | | Sadek_A 
Local time: 03:41
English to Arabic
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Eliza Hall wrote:
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[Edited at 2020-08-24 19:16 GMT]
Sorry, NOT interested, and way too busy. But, thanks.
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Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:41
Serbian to English
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Sadek_A wrote:
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You hold the copyright to all of your translations.
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Yes, but ONLY if no one paid you to do the translation.
If it was a "work for hire" it's a different story altogether.
Check "copyright in commissioned works"
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