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Jurisdiction: California, USA.

If a book was written in Greek two thousand years ago, and someone translated it into English more recently (say, yesterday), and then someone else wants to translate that English translation into French, would that be a violation of copyright law?

This resource suggests to me that it may be: https://www.translatorsbase.com/articles/42.aspx

However I haven't found really clear legal information about such re-translation.

costrom
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Aurast
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1 Answers1

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The English translation is a copyrighted work

While the original Greek is public domain, the English translation is a new literary work with its own copyright running for 70 years after the author(s) death(s). The French translation of the English work would require the permission of the author(s). A French translation of the original Greek wouldn't.

This assumes that the translation was not simply mechanical; like running it through Google translate. A purely mechanical translation lacks the originality required to create a literary work - an English translation obtained algorithmically is a copy; just like a zip file is a copy.

phoog
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Dale M
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  • No discussion of "Fair Use"? – MikeB Oct 19 '20 at 11:08
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    How is fair use relevant in this context? I don't see how parody is relevant and translating an entire book hardly falls under "commentary and criticism" – Doryx Oct 19 '20 at 12:15
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    @MikeBrockington a French translation of the English work that is made and used only under fair use would not require the translators' permission, just as any fair use doesn't require permission. But fair use is a US doctrine, so it doesn't apply in most parts of the world where French is spoken widely. There are similar provisions in European and Canadian copyright law, which are more restrictive in some circumstances and more permissive in others. I don't know about francophone jurisdictions in other parts of the world. (Furthermore, fair use is widely fundamentally misunderstood.) – phoog Oct 19 '20 at 14:27
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    Note also that the original Greek being public domain quite possibly only applies to the original Greek texts. If you buy a modern, printed copy, even in the original Greek, the typesetting effort usually counts as creative for copyright purposes. Oh, and scans of the original, if touched up by human hand in any way, are also covered. So to be 100% safe you almost have to go to the museum and copy straight from the original. Or at least make sure nobody can prove you didn't. – Perkins Oct 19 '20 at 17:17
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    @Perkins Or find a version that you can use that has been put into the public domain or shared with a permissive license that allows modification for commercial uses. I may be mistaken, but I would think that many ancient texts would have versions like that done by scholars and academic institutions that are making their money through over means – Kevin Oct 19 '20 at 17:30
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    @KevinWells Yes, those often exist. Do be sure to verify the whole chain back to the original though. If they copied from some newer version without permission it could get you in trouble. – Perkins Oct 19 '20 at 18:18
  • @phoog I agree that "Fair Use" is misunderstood, but that is why it needs to be addressed. To quote from Wiki (sorry - but relevant) "Fair dealing in United Kingdom law is a doctrine which provides an exception to United Kingdom copyright law, in cases where the copyright infringement is for the purposes of non-commercial research or study" – MikeB Oct 20 '20 at 10:11
  • //Or at least make sure nobody can prove you didn't.// I would think that this should apply non-nefariously: if the material involved in a claimed infringement is sufficiently original as to merit protection, it should be sufficiently unique that it could only have come from the claimant's work. If the accused excises everything that is sufficiently unique as to allow such a determination, that should imply that the left over material is exempt from copyright protection. If, for example, one takes two photographs of a city, scales and rotates them to match, and then traces a skyline... – supercat Oct 20 '20 at 16:26
  • ...which sits arbitrarily between the skylines in the two pictures, such a work may have been produced using two copyrighted photos, but the only aspect that would have been copied from other would have been the approximate shape of a skyline which appears in both. If the tracing doesn't really follow any part of either picture better than the other, the only features which will be shared between the tracing and the photos will be those that weren't copyrightable in the first place. – supercat Oct 20 '20 at 16:29
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    Does the English translator have to prove the French is based on English, or must the French translator prove it is not based on English? – Mark Oct 20 '20 at 18:10
  • What if the second translator translates the Greek to French, but uses the English translation to understand the meaning of the Greek. Would that be considered derived from the English or the Greek? – Christopher King Oct 21 '20 at 16:12
  • @PyRulez possibly both. There's nothing that says a derivative work must have exactly one source -- indeed they often do not. – phoog Oct 22 '20 at 18:31
  • @Perkins Typesetting is not copyrightable in the US, and even if scans of the original were touched up, at best that might protect the images, not the creative work of long dead authors. – prosfilaes Jun 14 '22 at 04:03