I stumbled across a video yesterday about AlphaGo from SNL Korea on YouTube. It was mildly amusing, and I was somewhat inspired from the recent Tygem android translation I did, so I translated my first video clip.

I uploaded my translation to YouTube, started to post it here, and minutes later, I received an email from YouTube that there was a copyright claim, and that the video would not be viewable to anyone but me.

It was a little disappointing since I took the time to translate it, but it made me wonder about what is really ok to do.

For example, I recently translated that Android client. Was that ok? What about articles I summarize?

These are probably questions for a lawyer, and not L19, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Any thoughts?

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be immersed

This definetly is not a topic you should trust forum posts about, and if you want to do translations and post them you should first consult a lawyer on this matter. I am not a lawyer, nor am i an expert on these subjects. I do however work in a content production related field, and as such these discussions tend to pop up at work every now and then. Everything i write is just an opinion, and might either be correct or incorrect.

That said, i would exercise caution. It all depends on which countries laws are in question, but in general, you can not use the content of someone else and re-post it, even if it's together with a translation. It does not matter if this content is written text, an image, a video or something else. As a general rule, if it's original content from someone/anyone you have no right to republish it.

In some countries you could be covered by different "fair use" laws, but please remember that US law does not equal Korean law for example.
In general however, it is not fair use if you republish full texts. If you borrow a few sentences from an article, or a few seconds of a video, and post original content together with that video, commenting for example on the original video, then might or not might not be covered under "fair use" laws depending on which countries laws are applied.

This might seem unfair, but all original content includes a copyright, and in some countries, it's even impossible to sell certain parts of copyright forward.

In youtube, both video and audio content tends to be monitored through automated systems which create a "hash" for certain parts of video and/or audio.
This is then compared to a large database of known content produced by content creators. If your content matches the hash then your content will automatically be flagged as infringing and be blocked/removed. Or at least this is how i've understood it, but i can't be 100% sure it actually works like this.

This sadly means that even if you borrow just a few seconds of some content and comment on that in a region where such use is legal, you'll probobly still be automatically blocked/removed. This of course is not fair/correct, but that's how these automated systems work. They monitor both snippets of original content, as well as full length versions.

Regarding news articles it's worth remembering that even Google got in legal trouble over their Google News stories. Some countries have laws, and/or interpretations of laws, where borrowing even a small snippet of written content and linking to it might be deemed illegal. This is specially true in case you're doing it in search for profit. What seeking profit is, is also a bit of a tricky questions. These days, if you have a popular youtube channel, you might get some money through advertisement, and even if it's only an euro per month, it might be seen as doing something for profit. Same thing if you have a personal blog, you might end up in a situation where someone accuses you of gaining personal profit through your blog, even if you don't.

Ah, too bad. Conceptually, I'm not trying to steal anybody's work - just trying to explain what they are saying in their work.
For example, if youtube had an interface where I could upload a translation of the existing video, that would be fine, too. Doesn't seem like stealing to me.
I suppose there are differences since there is no such interface, and I had to upload a copy of the existing video.

Well, if nothing else, I guess I got to practice a little bit. :-p

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be immersed

I am not a huge fan of the status quo with regard to copyright. One of my favorite observations in grad school is that professors would share bootleg copies of their own work with students, because academic publishing was such a mess. However... There are other reasons, too, even if there were an interface for crowdsourced translations. For a broadcast of a go game, that would probably be welcomed. But for a poet or a songwriter, it would be dicier.[0] If I am such a person, do I want my work presented to the public based on any old translation from any random person, or do I want to ensure that it's done by someone who knows my work and grasps both languages well?

[0] Or think about the trouble that our own John Fairbairn goes to in order to find the right phrase. He'll surely correct me if I'm wrong, but I bet he's particular about his translators.

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Occupy Babel!

Of course, I agree that some translations may be better than others.

In my view, though, I can watch a movie with my friends and explain what is happening, and I am not stealing the author's idea. Even if my translation is not perfect, the listener can judge that for themselves.

If translations are directly associated with the original author's content, then yeah - maybe the author doesn't want anybody's explanation. But if that's the case, then let me make my own private translation.

Anyway, a translator can and should strive for accuracy.

But ehat someone says in a foreign language shouldn't be secret on the Internet. If someone can explain the meaning, it should be allowed. If the author doesn't like my translation, then add to it and make it better.

Google already has crappy computer-generated translations of what's on the web. Why can't I offer my better translation?

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be immersed

Especially considering that last point, I don't get it.

Google translate allows poor translation of just about any original work on the web.

Why can a robot do it, but I can't?

Can I make my own robot to do translations?

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be immersed

Kirby, you make some good points, and I think the copyright law in general is no longer fit for purpose (my own pet niggle is that copyright absurdly extends 70 years after a person has died), but nowhere in what you say do I see any consideration of the poor author.

An author doesn't always assert his rights over money. It may be for the sake of his reputation, or to avoid major hassles. Copyright gives you control. So, for example, if you publish something and later realise you made a mistake (or you make a new discovery), if what you publish is one place you can easily edit it and restore/bolster your reputation. If it has been plastered all over the internet you can't do that. The mistake may even be that you have infringed someone else's copyright and have to take down the offending piece. That's impossible if the internet or bootleggers have had their way, and the poor author has to pay a much higher fine/compensation for something he did not do.

It may also be that the unauthorised translator does not identify the original author, who thus loses enhancement of this reputation. This is often much more important than royalty payments. Many authors who offer their work for "free" on the internet are actually try to build up a reputation that either promotes other work of theirs or makes a sparkling addition to a CV. The reputation that they seek (validly) may simply be "I'm the only the one with the hot gossip".

The are other rights that go along with basic copyright that can be seriously debased if unauthorised copying or translation is allowed. Moral rights are not much of an issue but were a very big issue a few years ago, when many authors wanted to prevent South Africa to beat sanctions in apartheid days (i.e. authors have the right to say where they work will be published).

Think for a moment about what you said above. You are in fact suggesting that an author spends his entire life scouring the internet to find illegal versions of his work so that he can explain it better. Really?

Your own rights are not infringed. You do have the right to explain any author's meaning, so long as you do not use the same form and substance as he does. You are also entitled to make translations or copies for your own private use, and that is why Google allows translations (even though their crappiness raises questions about being of the same substance ). If you use it to find out what a piece (allegedly) says that's not breach of copyright. But if you then repeat it for other people to read, you are in breach.

You even have the right to contact an author to ask if he will allow copying/translation. At first blush that seems a lot less work than what would be required of a poor author trawling the internet and correcting poor translations.

My suggestion is: start again, but pretend you are the author this time, and not the aggrieved party.

You also, as I understand it, have pretty extensive rights to translate or reproduce fragments for the sake of commentary. In the United States, that goes by the name Fair Use. While there's probably a lot of complicated court cases about what you can do, the central examples are clear enough: you cannot copy an entire book, then follow it up with commentary, but you most certainly can include sentences from that book followed by commentary.

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Occupy Babel!

Private use is one argument. But it's not clear to me that Google translate is a private use service. You can use Google translate to generate a link of a translated page, which anyone in the world is free to use. I suppose that the difference is that, in order to get a translation of the original work, the user needs to initiate the request (e.g. "Please translate this piece of work for me"), whereas uploading a new translation is automatically doing the translation, without anyone explicitly initiating the request.



I understand the argument that the author should have credit for his/her own work. And I understand that they may want to build up their reputation, or whatever. But I'm pretty sure that, in the cases where I want to translate, the author: (1) published their work publicly for anyone to view, and (2) have a specific intended audience (e.g. Korean or Japanese viewers). It's highly unlikely that they would care that I do a one-off translation into a different language for an audience that they aren't intending to reach anyway.

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If I have to sum up my thoughts:
(1) The ability to do adhoc free translation, as I'd prefer, is not ideal. There may be specific cases like you explain, where the author has very particular tastes about where his/her work is published and how.
(2) The current system is not ideal, either. In most cases - probably like in the case where I spent a couple of hours translating that AlphaGo video, the content producers would not have these particular tastes, and wouldn't care. It's true that I can try to contact the author every time, which is what I'd have to do, but response is probably unlikely in many cases, too. Some content providers would likely welcome translation into other languages, because it would spread the accessibility of their work.
(3) I still don't think Google translate is all that different. Authors may not like crappy translations of their work around the Internet, but this is what happens with Google translate.

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So I guess there isn't an easy solution. But the current situation is very annoying to me, even if I think of the author - who I really doubt would care if I translate his/her work.

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be immersed

Also, I don't really feel aggrieved. Just annoyed. I don't see a perfect solution.

As it is now, I can read articles, stories, or whatever. If I find that public content interesting or cool, I would normally be able to say, "Hey, friends! Look at this cool story that XYZ published. It was pretty cool!"

But if it's in Japanese or Korean, I can't do that with my non-Japanese or non-Korean speaking friends. Maybe I can say, "Hey guys! That was a pretty cool story. Too bad you can't read it!"

Contacting the author is always an option if you are successful. And in fact, I did do this once for a jubango article I translated. I found the original author on facebook, and she was actually happily surprised that I wanted to do it.

But that was a lucky situation. Not all authors are easy to contact.

So I guess I have no real solution.

Maybe when machine translation is better, it will solve the problem. People don't get mad at robots for translating...

Though, in some ways, I can feel some sort of purpose or self-worth in sharing a translation, myself. When robots are better than humans at translation, I suppose that will be gone, too..

Interesting world we live in.

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be immersed

But why not? You just write a summary in your own words. I do this all the time here, either with stories or book reviews. I encourage you to do the same.

There are really no drawbacks and many benefits. It's completely legal, it's much quicker, you don't need to contact the author, you can put a western slant on it or add explanations that a non-native needs, you can tie in more than one story. If it's a review you are even helping the author. If you really, really, really want to quote direct you can do up to 10% under fair use. But don't forget most people don't want a full story. They just want a taster or a heads-up. Add a link for the obsessives. Otherwise remember the French sage's advice: more is less.

You haven’t yet heard me swear at Google translate or at Facebook’s auto-translation

I don’t believe they will ever be “better” at translation, only “sufficient” (and even that not always). There’s too much ambiguity in language, too many things that depend on human context. (And I also hope you can still enjoy Go after AlphaGo )

Well, yes, this I totally agree with. “Interesting” as in that alleged Chinese curse (which actually seems to be a myth).

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Interesting. I guess I misunderstood the boundaries. It sounds like you are saying that a summary is OK, but direct translation is not. That's much better than nothing.

It doesn't help much for videos (how do you summarize a video?), but it certainly works for text

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be immersed

Oh, I certainly believe that the day computers are better than humans at language is coming.

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be immersed

I'd never heard 10% before. Is that a legal standard, or a rule of thumb? (I'm guessing half the news writing/blogging on the web falls above 10% quotation).

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Occupy Babel!