Quote:
Originally Posted by DNSB
The argument is not if the translation is copyright but rather whether it is a creation since that is generally required to have originality. It's been my experience that the better translations have quite a bit of originality.
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Well, a translation is an additional copyright. So a new translation of PD material is copyright in it's own right. However no-one has seriously tried to sell computer translations like Amazon is proposing.
Compare (though not the same thing) a music score in PD, but a modern performance and recording of it. Even if the score was fed into MIDI and no actual musicians employed, it's copyright.
The main issue though with the Amazon scheme is quality. It will make the poor translations of Jules Verne look good. Also like selling TTS as audio books it's greed, though not quite as extortionate.