[cc-community] should there be a CC attribute for authorized translations
Andrew Rens
andrewrens at gmail.com
Tue Jun 10 07:26:38 EDT 2008
Bob, I understand that you are suggesting that CC licences should contain an
"authorised translation" element. There are numerous customisations and
elements which would suit particular purposes. However if all of the
multiple variations were introduced into CC licence this would result in a
great deal of complexity, a larger number of licences, more possible
combinations, more attributes to understand. That would militate against
easy use of the licences, it would also fragment the commons. Indeed there
are some in the commons community who suggest that six licences are too many
that there should be one or at most two.
Its to resolve these issues that CC+ has been introduced. See
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Ccplus
The idea is that someone such as yourself could reserve some rights, and
then use CC+ to grant them, not in advance as is the case with the
permission granted by the CC licences, but on request. Dealing with requests
can be more carefully tailored to suit the numerous customisations for which
various people express preferences.
In the instance which you have raised, a translation is what the legal code
of the licences term an adaptation, which results in a derivative work. One
possible solution, as others have already intimated, would be to licence the
work with a no derivative element, so that no translations could be made
without permission. You could then authorise translations using CC plus.
Perhaps CC plus would enable you to require use of a particular corpus of
words.
However it seems from your post that you don't want to restrict translation
but simply to have an attribute which signifies whether a translation is
authorised or not. The attribution element of the licence enables you to
specify how a work is to be attributed. In other words you could allow
derivative works, but specify that in addition to bearing your name and the
title of the original work licensees who make translations to state on the
translation that it has not been authorised by you. You could even require
licensees to link back to your website which hosts the original work.
Jonathon raised an interesting question, whether rewriting a document which
is in English (South African) into English (US) as a translation. From a
licensing perspective it isn't necessary to answer that question because
whether it is a translation or not, it is probably an adaptation, which
would have to be authorised by a licence element (with global copyright law
in its current state). A linguist might advance a more rigours basis to
answe rthe question Jonathon posed. On an anecdotal level, I've found that
the re-writing in that specific example, from South African to US English,
is akin to translating, involving not only replacement of one word for
another such as "sidewalk" for "pavement" but understanding the idiom of
both language communities.
The idea of an "authorised translation" is itself a problematic one, as has
emerged from this discussion. What does authorised mean in this context? It
seems to mean that someone with authority has accepted the translation.
Where does this authority derive? The conventional answer is that the
creator of the original or her successors in title have authority, however
as Michael has pointed out that person may not know, or be able to know,
whether it is a faithful translation. Can "authorised" then bear any more
meaning than, 'the one chosen by the current rights-holder'?
Bob raises the issue of "cultural property". It should come as no surprise
that most if not all of those in the commons movement regard the "property"
metaphor as unhelpful in thinking clearly about the issues involved.
Similarly the ideal of a permission culture inherent in the idea of a
cultural (or corporate) elite declaring translations as unauthorised is
antithetical to the very notion of the commons.
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--
Andrew Rens
Now blogging at www.aliquidnovi.org
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