Re: legal notice must not translated?

[Claude Paroz <claude 2xlibre net>]

Le mercredi 28 avril 2010 à 17:50 +0200, Khaled Hosny a écrit :
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 05:42:24PM +0200, Johannes Schmid wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I am not entirely sure if we set up a formal GNOME policy at least I
> > couldn't find something in the wiki.
> > 
> > But AFAIK this discussion came up from time to time and it is right that
> > you must NOT translate legal notices because the software is licensed
> > with the exact wording and not in any translation.
> > 
> > Usually the legal notice (usually GPLv2 or v3) shouldn't be marked for
> > translation.
> 
> But to the audience of localized software, the untranslated legal
> notice means nothing, they can't read or understand it, so I can't
> understand how an unreadable notice is preferred over readable one, legal
> or not.

In the GNOME French Team, we always translate legal notices, following
models carefully translated that we reuse.
http://wiki.traduc.org/gnomefr/PhrasesType

For licences themselves, some contains a clear notice about translation.
E.g. the FDL:
"You may include a translation of this License provided that you also
include the original English version of this License. In case of a
disagreement between the translation and the original English version of
this License, the original English version will prevail."

For other licences, you should follow their recommendations, e.g. the
GPL/LGPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/translations.html

"To label your translations as unofficial, please add the following text
at the beginning, both in English and in the language of the
translation. Replace language with the name of that language, and “GNU
General Public License” and “GPL” with the name and abbreviation of the
license you're translating, if it's not the GPL:

        This is an unofficial translation of the GNU General Public
        License into language. It was not published by the Free Software
        Foundation, and does not legally state the distribution terms
        for software that uses the GNU GPL—only the original English
        text of the GNU GPL does that. However, we hope that this
        translation will help language speakers understand the GNU GPL
        better."

So if you add the latter paragraph in one of the first paragraph content
of the translation, you should be safe.

Take this as a personal opinion, not as a legal advice :-)

Claude
-- 
www.2xlibre.net