RFI: translators and copyright

UK law, i guess (haha except it may also involve dutch contract law *sigh*)

Is this a "do translators have copyright over their translation". I believe the answer is yes, but obv not exclusive copyright. It depends who the copyright owner is, many translations will have the ownership transfered to either the publisher or the original author (depending on who it is done for and why).

I think the EU has standardised its copyright legislation, the Berne Cnvention (and subsequent 1887 Copyrights act) refers in particular to translation copyright..

d'you know where i can look it up pete?

i will direct the lovely Emma B to this thread, mark!

I do not know if that will be helpful but I work in a Translation agency in N.Y.C called Rennert, we provide translation services for big companies such as Estee Lauder, Microsoft. We do not transalte books but commercial documents. As far as Rennert is concerned, we do not deal with copyright. We just deliver a service to Estee Lauder for instance but Estee lauder keeps the copyright of its document. To give you an exemple, I asked my boss, if we deal with copyright and he told me that we have never dealt with copyrights in 30 years. But be careful, it may work differently in the publishing world.
It seems that when you translate, you do not add any thing to the original doc, you just "copy it" in another language, so you do not deal the copyright.

Mark, it works VERY differently in book publishing but I've no time to type out what I've found in the Writer's Handbook, which is analogue. Call the Translators Association on 020 7373 6642 or look on the English PEN website.