In a message dated 4/26/2011 12:08:42 AM Pacific Daylight Time, smolensk@eunet.rs writes:

Translation is not "sweat of the brow". Copyright law of Germany, for example, explicitly states that translations are copyrighted: http://bundesrecht.juris.de/urhg/__3.html . Copyright law of Serbia, for another example, does the same.

This doesn't exactly address the point. A work is copyright, a translation enjoys that *same* copyright. It doesn't create an additional independent copyright.

This was the situation when Harriet Beecher Stowe tried to sue for people translating her work. That's why the US law changed IIRC.

A translation, under US law, as I understand it, is a derivative work, and thus can be made, under the same copyright protection, but does not create an additional copyright distinct from the original work.