[cc-community] should there be a CC attribute for authorized translations

Matthew J. Agnello matt.agnello at gmail.com
Tue Jun 10 02:27:21 EDT 2008


The author always has the right to authorize translations, but this  
isn't really a freedom given to everyone else that you can mark. The  
Creative Commons freedoms are all things the user does not need to  
call the author about. Authorizing a translation involves getting  
permission from the author, so it wouldn't ever have a place among CC  
licenses.

I think the best way to continue using CC but to keep others from  
producing unauthorized translations would be to use a CC-BY-ND license  
for the source work and in the "more permissions URL" portion of the  
CC license generator point the user to a page where the user can  
submit his or her translation to you for authorization (even if just  
by e-mail). It would then be up to you to find someone who speaks the  
language who could help you authorize it. This obviously would help  
more in producing translations than finding people you trust to  
authorize them for you, but it's a start, and it allows you to control  
the translations (in fact, all derivatives) yourself.

Best,
// Matt
--
Matthew J. Agnello
http://hungryfilmmaker.com/
< matt.agnello at gmail.com >

On Jun 9, 2008, at 10:49 AM, bob daggit wrote:

>
>  a previous thread skimmed the surface of the issue and i am not  
> that involved that i can say it completely addressed the issue. http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2008-January/003035.html
>
>  for some time i have wondered why there is no license attribute or  
> optional html tag that implicates unauthorized translations, by  
> either man or machine. i am not aware of the status of the html tag,  
> which perhaps a machine translation could treat like a hosts.deny  
> specification, but looking at your selection of 6 licenses on a  
> continuum, i wonder which combination of CC license attributes would  
> suffice, and i come to the conclusion that you need an attribute for  
> permission to modify to human-translate, and permission to modify to  
> machine-translate and permission/authorization to 'speak on behalf  
> of'. in particular, the question is whether the translation is  
> approved or authorized by the authors. (the same consideration about  
> 'authorization' could be somewhat analogously be applied to  
> biographies and spokespeople and court appointed translators.)  
> obviously any author whose work is translated will tell you whether  
> the interpretation is an authorized attempt to represent the meaning  
> the original intended - even though there is no way to perfectly  
> translate a work maintaining its meanings, cultural nuances and  
> written style. in fact, one could argue that a translation should  
> not be allowed, because the original meaning is not translatable,  
> due to the special nature of a given language of origin, as, for  
> example, in poetry. let us refer to that alleged essential  
> untranslatability by the term cultural property.
>   in addition to these points, i think it is fair to add another  
> issue, that of the dictionary used in the case of machine- 
> translation. should the world be allowed to copy (into their own  
> open- or closed-licensed corpuses) the one to one correspondences  
> between translated words and translated idioms. and perhaps the  
> author could desire to specify that a particular open- or closed- 
> license dictionary or font or phrased be chosen for any translation  
> to be permitted. and we have not even approached the issue of  
> intentionally misspelled or unorthodox compounded words, and exotic  
> punctuation. also let us not forget performance art, and authorizing  
> academic translation licensing.
>   finally, since translations are not going away, there is the issue  
> of a boiler plate being placed with content saying that the  
> translation is or is not authorized, even if the content is copyable  
> or modifiable  in other ways.
>  cultural property can further be specialized. in particular i could  
> envision an author, people or government, beleaguered by issues of  
> cultural imperialism, asking the national public university to  
> endeavor to protect the future of their language by stamping all  
> content with unauthorized translation prohibitions, and instituting  
> a clearinghouse for deciding which works can be translated into  
> which languages and how. certainly in this modern day we still find  
> this vein of isolationism and control, which, even if not official,  
> includes students of foreign languages being not infrequently  
> discouraged. some languages are even suppressed deservingly, for  
> failure to reciprocate and open up their language to the masses.  
> though this is politically incorrect, it exists even among  
> evangelists of english, which is very much shared, almost  
> fanatically, even to enemies of english who then appear very  
> cosmopolitan as they prepare acts of savagery behind the backs of  
> those who pressed so hard in the name of whomever to bring them  
> modern civilisation.
>   shouldn't the creative commons proponents include this on their  
> agenda:  to include attributes to adequately address the right of an  
> author to authorize translations? and don't you think that  
> dictionaries for machine or human translation should be specifiable  
> and sharable?
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