--- Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires <p@ppires.org> wrote:
> Hello, folks.
> 
> I am sending this message after having talked to Jan
> Schaumann about 
> copyright notices in htdocs pages (but perhaps the
> Guide and other 
> documentation could also be affected).  The issued
> came to surface after 
> I sent him a diff for Portuguese translation, mostly
> consisting of 
> changes to copyright notice in old pages, which had
> been left 
> untranslated when I first worked on them.
> 
> For a number of sensible reasons, Jan suggested that
> those notices 
> should remain untranslated.  However, I have a
> strong feeling that 
> copyright notices are targeted at the reader (so
> that a casual reader 
> won't unconsciously "borrow" copyrighted material
> from our site, for 
> example), and should, therefore, be translated.  On
> the oher hand, we 
> were not absolutely sure that such notices were not
> there for use by 
> authorities in te US, to help enforcing copyright
> claims, if necessary.
> 
> Looking at other translations for examples, we have
> German and Spanish 
> with untranslated notices, but we also have French,
> that translates not 
> only the copyright message, but also "The NetBSD
> Foundation" (which I 
> left like this for Portuguese, since it is a proper
> name).  I also 
> browsed a handful of major brazilian web sites and
> portals, and found 
> copyright notices very similar to those I intended
> to use.  We agreed 
> that common practice would be a positive indication
> towards translation.
> 
> I asked him if this has ever be discussed here.  If
> it has, there was 
> apparently no concensus.  It would be nice iif we
> could  be consistent 
> across different translations, without hurting
> language/cultural 
> pratices, of course.  Besides copyrights, there  are
> other legalese 
> (disclaimers, licenses and others), generally
> targeted at final users. 
>  I cannot see any reason for translating a license
> and not translating a 
> copyright message.
> 
> We, therefore, would like to hear from you
> (especially you with broader 
> legal background), in order to be consistent and
> allows NetBSD to be 
> effectively spread to users from every country and
> language.

I may have missed this in your text above, but what
are the best arguments for and against doing this? 

If a document is in a certain language, it seems that
the copyright should be in the same language, with
possibly the orignal language of the copyright also
included as another post suggested. 

Is there any reason why not to translate the
copyright? Possible intended meaning could change?

Andy

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