Re: COPYLEFT SIGN

From: Michael Everson (everson@egt.ie)
Date: Mon May 15 2000 - 14:56:24 EDT


Despite what John says about some linguistic communities below, you cannot
stipulate that terms are translatable or non-translatable. The term
copyright is commonly translated.

I stick by ISO policy in this matter. Interested parties can expect at
least one National Body no vote with a comment to use the term FREE
COPYRIGHT SIGN or REVERSED COPYRIGHT SIGN if they insist on COPYLEFT SIGN
at this stage. It seems to me that what they really want is a character
encoded, not its name in particular. The Italian text by the translator
shows just how awful the term "copyleft" is.

Ar 09:38 -0800 2000-05-15, scríobh John Cowan:
>Michael Everson wrote:
>
>> >It ["copyleft"] is a common name that is not meant to be
>> >translated
>>
>> You cannot stipulate this. "Copyright" is commonly translated.
>
>The GNU page http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html uses the term,
>and the page http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html defines it.
>
>The Spanish, French, Norwegian, Turkish, and Russian versions of these
>pages use "copyleft" -- in the Russian page, using Latin script to boot.
>The Japanese version says "¡Ö¥"¥Ô¡¼¥ì¥Õ¥È¡×", which I cannot interpret,
>but appears to be katakana, thus probably a borrowing as well.
>
>Only the Italian version uses the phrase "software libero senza
>permesso d'autore", with a translator's footnote:
>
> Si tratta di un gioco di parole, che qui viene
> reso con "permesso di autore": copyright
> (diritto di autore) è formato dalle parola "copy" (copia)
> e "right" (diritto, ma anche destra), opposto di "left"
> (sinistra, ma anche lasciato).
>
>So I think "copyleft" is established as a multilingual word among the
>community of interest.

Michael Everson ** Everson Gunn Teoranta ** http://www.egt.ie
15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire/Ireland
Vox +353 1 478 2597 ** Fax +353 1 478 2597 ** Mob +353 86 807 9169
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