Copyright and control: whose rights?
The day after David Bellos’s keynote address, in which he explained translators’ rights and rights in translation and recounted the history of copyright, Sue Leschen spoke about the present-day implications of copyright law for language professionals and clarified how language professionals can copyright their works. She is a non-practising solicitor, member of various UK and international translator and interpreter organizations, and has her own legal and business French interpreting and translation services company. Her presentation focused primarily on copyright and rights in England and Wales. (Thanks to David Bellos, we were aware that the latter differ somewhat in Scotland for historical and jurisdictional reasons.)
Generally, the rights to a work (a translation, for example) are granted for a limited time, which allows the rights holder to generate income from their copyrighted work. Noting that “copyright can be a tool in our business toolkit”, Sue mentioned several ways of generating income from copyrighted work, pointing out the pros and cons of licensing versus assigning copyright. Copyright can’t be used to protect your business name or logo, but you can protect your company’s name in the UK by registering it at Companies House.
In the UK, the legislation protecting the intellectual property of individuals is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. To copyright your work in the UK, you simply mark it with a © plus your name and the year in which the work was created. Sue showed an example of generic wording to protect copyright and alerted us to issues relating to the copyright ownership of employees versus freelancers. These are important to bear in mind when a language professional is hired by an agency and asked to sign an agency agreement.
In most countries, the copyright lasts for at least the creator’s lifetime plus 70 years. Sue alerted us to copyright issues of particular importance for translators and – with a nod to language professionals who teach or give talks or presentations – for those of us wishing to reproduce text or images on our slides. She advised that translations of source documents are generally considered to be “derivative works” of the latter and explained that such translations therefore enjoy the same copyright as the original document, and the copyright is owned and controlled by the original document’s author unless there is an agreement to the contrary.
Sue explained how copyright can be breached and mentioned the legislation relevant to breaches of copyright in England and Wales and the procedures that can be followed in the event of copyright breaches. However, as David Bellos had already warned us, litigation is so costly that very few private individuals pursue it.
Replying to a question about the merits of Creative Commons rights, Sue noted that these are useful for people who are not concerned about commercial gain. And when asked whether a © on a text is valid in other countries, she noted that in the case of Europe there are relevant EU directives to consult, but that it is best to seek advice from specialist intellectual property lawyers.
Language professionals need to be aware of copyright but, as Sue ably showed, copyright issues are complex. The 74 slides she prepared for her presentation were too many to show in the time allotted, but she has kindly made them all available to MET members. They, and the resources mentioned on them, will be an invaluable reference, especially for MET members operating in the UK and/or translating into or out of French. Many thanks, Sue!
This METM24 presentation was chronicled by Joy Burrough-Boenisch.
Featured photo courtesy of MET.