General Breakdown of Rights

Holy shit you included way too much completely irrelevant information in that. This is going to take a very long time to go through.. Damn it... Fine, but after this, I'm done with this thread. You can reply if you want, but I'm out.

I represented only a very specific point of the Berne Convention, the only point relevant to this discussion. You brought in a ton of completely irrelevant parts of it, which I'll discuss below. For now, note that I'm focused on Article 2:

Local laws do take precedence, as you said: However, as I said, this is a good thing, because the local laws in China do, in fact, give copyright protection to unauthorized translations. My bringing up the Berne Convention in the first place is to highlight international standard for copyright protection of derivative works. In China, the translations are protected regardless.

Yes. Unless they have signed this right away, an author has the exlcusive right to translate their own works or authorize others to do so. Although... The language is a bit sketchy because the legal trouble from translations comes in when you begin publishing a translation. The right to physically translate a work, for private use, is more along the lines of an unalienable human right.. Anyway, this section you've quoted is extremely irrelevant to this discussion because you've essentially just highlighted that unauthorized derivative works infringe upon an author's original copyright. We all know this, y'know?

The point is that a translation is protected independantly. You can't publish it without the author's permission, but not even the author can claim your translation as their own. It's protected as an independent work - your work.

I just want to go ahead and point out that you're now reading from the section on an author's original work. Everything you're quoting is about an author's rights to their own work. Essentially that even if they sign the work away, they always have the right to claim authorship of it and object to any mutilation of it. This might be somewhat relevant to translation if an author catches wind of some of the shitty MTL'ing done on Qidian's side of things~ I'd call that mutilation, wouldn't you?~

Okay, so, you're now on to the appendix for developing countries. Provisions that allow them to set up a completely optional system of licenses and government-issued authorizations for the translation and reproduction of foreign works. It's really amazing that you've taken this and declared it to be some god-given truth that applies to the rest of the world, or even just to developing countries that haven't partaken of this, again, completely optional system. Article IV is just a limitation on Articles II and III, by the way - a list of qualifications you must meet before you can be given a license under the previous articles. It's not a list of "what to do if you can't gain authorization the proper way" so much as a list of restrictions on the license system introduced in the previous articles.

Even if, however, every bit of this license system applies, you're still missing the point: The translation is protected independently.

TL;DR: Under pretty much any developed countries' laws, the "right of translation," which, honestly, would be better written as "the right of publication of derivative works," is initially and exclusively owned by authors. We all know this. We do not need to hear it repeated. Everything following this redundant statement is taken from the licensing appendix again, an optional system designed for developing countries that does not apply unless they want it to. Wonderful.

The original author cannot, under any circumstances, confiscate, claim total ownership, or seize a derivative translation of his work. The derivative is protected by its own copyright without prejudice for the author's original copyright. The derivative, if published without authorization, does infringe upon the author's rights and the translator can be held liable for such.

The result would be the translation being taken down and financial compensation to the author. It most definitely would not be the author claiming ownership of the translator's work. Gods no. Keep dreaming.

....................



Let me put this really simply:

Without the author's permission, you cannot publish a translation. Regardless, your translation is your own work, independant from the author's, and similarly cannot be published without your permission. You are the author of your translation.

 

I actually was reading it a little differently (darn english!), but the result is the same. It's not "derivatives are protected until they infringe and then suddenly have no copyright protection of their own," so much as "the author's protection takes precedence in the case of any conflict." ... Conflicts might arise from things like further adaptations of the translation..? I'm not sure. I am sure, however, that the fundamental copyright protection - the protection against copying, publishing without permission, etc - of the translation does not infringe on the author's own rights.

And my "key point" here is that unauthorized translations do, in fact, have their own copyright protection. It's just that publishing them infringes on the author's rights, and you can be held liable for that. A court would order you to compensate the author for damages, remove your translation from circulation, etc. The author would not, however, be able to claim your work as theirs.