Authors\' Moral Rights - Austrian Supreme Court Thread poster: Lia Fail (X)
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Lia Fail (X) 
Spain
Local time: 08:54
Spanish to English
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Supreme Court ruling on authors\' moral rights for translators -
please disseminate
For further information please contact mailto:[email protected] or
mailto:[email protected] (do not reply to sender).
The Austrian Association of Literary Translators
(Uebersetzergemeinschaft)issued a press release today, the gist of which
Werner Richter has meanwhile translated into English for your
information/elation:
... See more Supreme Court ruling on authors\' moral rights for translators -
please disseminate
For further information please contact mailto:[email protected] or
mailto:[email protected] (do not reply to sender).
The Austrian Association of Literary Translators
(Uebersetzergemeinschaft)issued a press release today, the gist of which
Werner Richter has meanwhile translated into English for your
information/elation:
David wins against Goliath -- Austrian Supreme Court ruling on authors\'moral
right for translators
The Austrian Supreme Court recently published a final ruling in a copyright
case that had gone on since 1999. According to this decision, it is unlawful
to quote from literary translations without naming the author of that
translation, i.e. the translator. In the case in point, it was the Austrian
state-owned broadcasting company (ORF), but the ruling will have
repercussions on the presence of translated literature in all the media, at
least in Austria, since omitting translator\' names -- which has been
unfortunately a frequent neglect in so many literary reviews and feature
articles about authors -- might now have legal consequences in whatever the
medium.
In 1999, translator Werner Richter switched on the Austrian radio to listen
to a literary feature about \"his\" author, US writer T. Coraghessan
Boyle,which was 44 minutes long, including several longish music
\"interludes\", with a total of 12 minutes of quotations from two of his
translations, without the radio station bothering to give his name, at least
in the final credits -- where everybody is usually named: narrators,
producers, technicians etc.
The radio station denied any obligation to have mentioned the translator\'s
name, and because of the obvious infringement of his author\'s moral right,
his association decided to make it a case of precedence, therefore
supporting him in a lawsuit. The case went through all the courts, and
already the second court suggested a supreme-court ruling in order to have
the status and the moral rights of literary translators decided upon once
and for all.
The Supreme Court ruling (GzOGH 29.1.2002, 4Ob293/01v) states that all the
-- rather nebulous -- objections made by the ORF lawyers over the course of
the lawsuit are without any substance, and that Werner Richter should indeed
have been named as an author/copyright holder in the broadcast programme in
point.
This might be a major precedent, for at least in Austria, every translator
whose work is quoted in the media even in small parts can now refer to this
court decision. We are quite confident that the respect it expresses with
regard to our creative work will have a long-awaited positive effect on
journalists and authors writing or reporting about translated literature in
the Austrian media, although we must say that we consider it somewhat
astonishing that it was necessary to wave such a big legal stick at ll in
order to enforce mentioning the name of the translator whose creative work
was used by somebody else for their own creative purposes. We should have
thought this to be a mere question of respect among colleagues.
For the time being, this ruling is of course of purely national value for
our profession in Austria, since copyright law is different in every
country. (And for what it\'s worth, the text of the decision -- which can be
obtained by fax through our office -- makes explicit mention of the relevant
German law under which the case would have had a different outcome.)
Nevertheless, it is good news and a positive development for the status of
our profession worldwide. And after all, progress in these matters often
consists in having the national legislation follow a good example from
somewhere else!
In two words: I won!
objection overruled
Werner Richter
Brigitte Rapp
ÜBERSETZERGEMEINSCHAFT
AUSTRIAN LITERARY TRANSLATORS\' ASSOCIATION
Seidengasse 13, A-1070 Wien
Tel:+43-1/526 20 44-52
Fax: 524 64 35 or 526 20 44 30
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.translators.at
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| | | | 3 in 1
Local time: 08:54
French to German
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| Congratulations & ORF | Apr 11, 2002 |
Congratulations, Werner!
I just would like to illustrate by another example that ORF does what he wants and doesn\'t respect the rights of anybody. About ten years ago, some of my friends and me did some traditional music recordings for them (Zither) for a television program.
They have been using one of the recordings daily, for two years (!), as a kind of \"background noise\" for another program. They NEVER gave our name.
Now they continue playing our r... See more Congratulations, Werner!
I just would like to illustrate by another example that ORF does what he wants and doesn\'t respect the rights of anybody. About ten years ago, some of my friends and me did some traditional music recordings for them (Zither) for a television program.
They have been using one of the recordings daily, for two years (!), as a kind of \"background noise\" for another program. They NEVER gave our name.
Now they continue playing our recordings on television and on the radio, they have even put them on several CDs, without asking us - I would not have had to mention, I guess.
[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-04-11 20:53 ] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Werner George Patels, M.A., C.Tran.(ATIO) (X)
Local time: 02:54
German to English
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| Off-topic: ORF | Apr 11, 2002 |
ORF gives all broadcasters a bad name. Frankly, even Russia has had more liberalization in TV over the last 10 years than Austria.
*******************
Be that as it may, this ruling is, indeed, good news - and I hope that ORF will be forced to pay a hefty amount of money!
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