Who owns the translation rights to a book?

The right to decide that your book gets translated is yours, always. The open question is who owns the translated text itself, and that is settled by your agreement with whoever produced it — not by default. That is the whole of book translation rights in one paragraph, and from there it branches into three different situations.

One thing up front: this is a general explanation, not legal advice, and the law varies from country to country.

What a translation is, legally

The central idea is that a translation counts as a "derivative work" — a new work that leans on an existing one. United States copyright law lists translation explicitly as its first example of one.

Two conclusions follow, and both are worth remembering. First: the right to prepare a derivative work belongs to the rights holder of the original book. Second: the rights created in a translation cover only what the translator added, and grant no right at all in the original text.

In plain terms — a translation does not make anyone the owner of your book, but it does create a new layer, and you want to know whose it is.

The ordinary case: your book, and you commission a translation

This is the situation most readers of this article are in, and it is the simplest.

Your book. You decide it will be translated into a particular language. You need one thing: for the translated text to be yours, so you can sell it, change it, produce a print edition from it, and translate onward from it in two years' time.

If you are working with a human translator, the way to get that is a clause in the agreement. If you are using a service or a tool, the way is to read the terms of use and confirm they do not reserve rights in the result.

It sounds too formal for an independent author's book, and it is exactly the point where people get stuck two years later — when they want to bring out a print edition and the translator no longer answers.

The case that needs checking: a human translator

A good literary translator does creative work, and in many parts of the world that earns them a degree of right in the text they produced. It does not make them the owner of the book — it means it is worth having in writing what happens to the text.

Three questions worth appearing in the agreement, even if it is a three-line email:

• Who owns the translated text after payment
• Whether you may edit it without asking
• Whether the translator's name goes in the book, and where

That third point is not purely legal; in many countries crediting the translator is the norm, and it is something readers appreciate.

The third case: somebody else's book

Here the answer is short. A book somebody else wrote, whose rights are in force, does not get translated without permission. It does not matter how good the translation is, whether you credit the author, or how little you charge.

Two exceptions do open a door. The first is a book whose copyright has expired and which is in the public domain. The second is explicit permission, bought or granted by the rights holder — usually the publisher rather than the author.

Note one more thing: even if the original book is in the public domain, an existing translation of it may be protected in its own right. If you want a version in a third language, translate from the original.

What to settle before you start

Before commissioning a translation, long before you upload anything to a store, it is worth answering four questions in writing to yourself: who holds the rights in the original book; who will own the new text; whether you may edit it; and who gets credited.

Four lines. They are worth more than all the rest of the paperwork around publishing a book, and the decision about an international standard book number gets simpler too once ownership is clear. If you are building the order of operations, frequently asked questions helps arrange it.