A fascinating piece of work by Wendell Ricketts can now be downloaded from his site, his detailed study of Copyright "Rustling" in English-Language Translation: How Translators Keep (and Lose) Rights to Their Work: Data from Translations Published in 2014 (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).
I've mentioned the problem of publishers not allowing translators to retain the translation-copyright to their work quite frequently (most recently just a few days ago), but this study really shows the extent of the awful situation. Really awful: Ricketts finds:
University presses are the worst offenders -- but surprisingly many commercial publishers are, to very varying degrees, also culprits.
All of this is should be of interest, but also pay particular attention to the phenomenon of US/UK publishers taking on "pre-copyrighted" translations (as, for example, Open Letter did with its forthcoming Lies, First Person by Gail Hareven, as I note disapprovingly at the end of my review) -- a particularly insidious end-run around translators' rights that looks to be on the rise (and which isn't of any particular benefit to publishers, either).
This is a very useful overview of what is a big problem -- bigger than most folks imagine, I would think (I certainly didn't think the percentages where this bad) -- and thoughtfully addresses the issues at issue here.
One hopes that it helps effect the necessary changes in the business; it should certainly start a lot of discussions (and quite a few contract-negotiations).
I've mentioned the problem of publishers not allowing translators to retain the translation-copyright to their work quite frequently (most recently just a few days ago), but this study really shows the extent of the awful situation. Really awful: Ricketts finds:
More than one-third of the time in trade and commercial publishing and just under 80% of the time in university-press publishing, translators do not retain copyright to their own work.These are just incredible numbers -- and helpfully Ricketts breaks them down, using not just the very useful Three Percent database but also looking beyond it. As you'll recall, the Three Percent database is limited to previously untranslated works of fiction and poetry, and Ricketts also includes non-fiction -- finding scholarly and nonfiction works wound up representing: "roughly 42% of the published 2014 translations I surveyed". Given the difficulty in finding copyright information about some titles not all could be included, but covering 913 titles published in 2014 this is a very comprehensive and up-to-date survey indeed.
University presses are the worst offenders -- but surprisingly many commercial publishers are, to very varying degrees, also culprits.
All of this is should be of interest, but also pay particular attention to the phenomenon of US/UK publishers taking on "pre-copyrighted" translations (as, for example, Open Letter did with its forthcoming Lies, First Person by Gail Hareven, as I note disapprovingly at the end of my review) -- a particularly insidious end-run around translators' rights that looks to be on the rise (and which isn't of any particular benefit to publishers, either).
This is a very useful overview of what is a big problem -- bigger than most folks imagine, I would think (I certainly didn't think the percentages where this bad) -- and thoughtfully addresses the issues at issue here.
One hopes that it helps effect the necessary changes in the business; it should certainly start a lot of discussions (and quite a few contract-negotiations).