[Foundation-l] translation and the GFDL

[White Cat]

Which country is this a reference of?

GFDL license uses very careful wording and any translation will not be able
to fully reflect it. Translations of GFDL are in breach of GFDL and can only
be used unofficially as per GFDL itself. This is legally binding.

Any court will accept foreign text (though they will let a licensed expert
or two translate it for them so they have a clue what the license is about)
but the legal case would be based on the wording as it appears on the
English wording of GFDL. That is what we mean by legally binding.

In addition any such legal case would most likely be an international
copyright dispute at which there are international treaties governing how it
is to be conducted. No sensible court will dismiss a copyright statement in
a foreign language.

    - White Cat

On 7/2/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
>
> >An issue on commons and various non english wikis.
> >
> >First it is only legal to translate the GFDL if you add:
> >
> >"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."
> >
> >At the top.
> >
> >Secondly it needs to be made clear at all times that it is the en
> >version that is legally binding.
> >
> That doesn't help in a country which requires that disputes be argued in
> the language of that country with contractual texts in that language.
>
> Ec
>
>
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