The story is that I have read an interesting blog entry of Russell Ball and decided to translate the whole blog entry and put it on my extra blog in which I intend to store my translated articles. A few days later Russell wrote a blog entry which, at first, made me think he didn’t approve my act (sorry for my bad interpretation). He clarified me later that I have misunderstood his meaning. He even allowed me to translate any of his blog entry. Thanks very much Russell.

To make sure about the translation issue, I have gathered more information about copyright law and realized that just making it clear that I am not trying to steal other people’s content by placing the original author’s name in the translated article and providing a link to the original content doesn’t make me able to get away from copyright violation.

I found an article talking about the case of translation and online copyright. The author have simulated the situation that.

1. Person A writes an article in Japanese.
2. Person B sees the article, translates it into English, and posts the translated article on his own website

Is Person B infringing Person A’s copyright?

There are 3 person B’s used cases.

1. Person B posts the translated article on his own website without giving any credit to Person A, or providing a link back to Person A’s website

2. Person B posts the translated article on his own website, and credits Person A as the original author. Better yet, Person B even posts a link Person A’s article.

3. Person B posts the translated article on his own website after obtaining permission from Person A.

My case with Russell’s content falls in number 2 the one which seems OK but it’s not.

The translator may have put real effort in translation and once the original work has been translated, the output can be considered as a “derivative work” of the original source. He even makes his intention clear by giving credit to the author and providing a like to the original content. But as long as the translation is not in “fair use”, he is still subject to copyright infringement.

I have translated the whole blog entry, not a part of it. All parts of the output work derived from the original work so I can’t say that I am showing an excerpt of a blog or I just want to show an example message or I am just trying to make a parody. The output work is not a fair use of the original work.

The article about Japanese translation explains that:

Using our example above, it’s the same as Person B creating his own Gundam series where the Gundam are made out of wood. Although Person B’s wood Gundam are different from Person A’s metal Gundam, Person B is still infringing on Person A’s copyrights.

Things will be different if the original work’s owner is willingly to put his/her work in a license that is friendly for distribution and making derivative work like “Creative Common License”. The best and safest way for this kind of scenario is to ask for the author permission in performing any thing on his/her work.

Now let me tell you a bit about my motivation behind my purpose of translating other people’s articles before I end this blog entry.

I am a software developer and I , like all other developers around the word, trying my best to keep myself up to date with all the technology trends and knowledge. With the extremely fast flow of IT information these days, waiting for a government’s department to translate modern technical books or initiate a project to translate articles about the newest technology to thai is just like an impossible hope.

So I have been training myself to read english so I can learn directly from the original sources. The thing that starts my motivation is that I often recommend some good resource or articles on internet to my colleagues and got back the reply like “Do you have those articles in thai”, “I am not that good at reading English, I will see if I can get it somewhere else in thai”. Useless for me to tell them that being in IT field, reading and writing in english are not something we can avoid. I am not very good at reading/writing in English too but at least I am willing to keep practicing.

Not very long ago I found www.thaidev.org which provides forum/resources for thai developers and encourage people to submit translated article under Creative Common License. I thought, “this is great” I might have something to contribute. My hope is that thai developers may feel more comfortable to read those translated article and , at the same time, develop their interest to seek more of this informative resources from the original sources and gradually become familiar with reading in english.

I hope I will also benefit form the translation process. I should gain more understanding in the article I am working on because I will have to do some crosscheck with other resources and performing some research to make sure I truly understand what I am doing otherwise I will just embarrass myself in front of public place if I have put a false information in the translated work.