Publishing the Same Work in Two Languages
In one of the workshops I was teaching, I was asked whether it was acceptable to publish the same article twice in two different languages. I was a bit stumped as to what to say.
Keith Seitter, the Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society, was able to provide a great answer to this question. Here is what he said.
The manuscript in a different language is not a new work, but a translation of an existing published work. As such, it cannot be submitted as though it was independent of the previous work.
As a thought experiment, imagine an author published a novel in French last year and you want to publish an English translation of it. You would need to get the author’s and/or publisher’s permission as copyright holders of the original and you would have to identify it clearly as a translation of that original work. You could not publish it in English as though it was your own. You could have your name on it as the translator, and your English version would have its own copyright attached because there is authorship in the art of translating that belongs to you, but it would still need to clearly identify its original publication in French and its original authorship and copyright. Failing to do so would be copyright infringement.
Translating that situation (pun intended) to a case in which you as an author publish in one language and then seek to publish that research again in another language, the second publication represents a translation of the first and so you would have to seek permission from the original journal it was published in, and you would have to submit it as a translation of the prior publication with full reference to that earlier publication. It would be up to the journal to which this was submitted to decide if it wanted to republish the paper as a translation. This is done from time to time, but is not all that common. It usually only happens if the original paper was very important scientifically AND in such an obscure journal that it would be hard to access. In all other cases, the original publication would stand alone and would be referenced as any other paper would, and it would be up to those seeking to use the citation to obtain a copy and have it translated.
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Hello, I was happy to find your post because I happen to have a similar concern and although it shed some light, I’d very much like your opinion.
I work in a company that sells education books in Mexico. We have issued over 30 titles in spanish and they’ve been published. We now have the english version/translation of them too, although these have yet to be published.
We want to get US Copyrights for each work in order to sell them also in the US (we’re planning on selling them online..) I’ve already done research and read as many brochures and circulars the copyright.gov site has but there’s not one place where it says if
a) I should submit the spanish version as one AND submit the english version as a completely different work. -Which would end up with us having two copyrights, one for each work.
or
b) If I should submit both versions, expecting to have one single copyright.
I’ve emailed them but they keep focusing on the published/unpublished issue and have not answered my question as to what happens if I have a spanish and an english version of them.
Any thoughts? I’ll really appreciate your help,
Best regards,
Anna Roig
ann.roig@gmail.com
Sorry, I don’t know copyright law well enough to suggest which option is the best.
Hi, thanks for this clarification.
But what if the first article was an Op-ed in one language (let’s say spanish). And this Op-ed was published in a newspaper (therefore not peer reviewed).
Will it then be possible, if the Op-ed was good, to translate it and try to submit it for a peer-reviewed journal, for their “viewpoint” section.
thanks for your help
Jant:
Yes, if the initial article wasn’t peer reviewed, then rewriting it for a peer-reviewed journal is likely acceptable in most circumstances.
Dave
Hello sir,
I want to publish an academic paper in an English Journal. My supervisor is Italian and wants to translate 80% of my paper to Italian and publish it in an Italian Journal. We are not sure if this is acceptable or not? Thank you very much in advance.
The best way to check is with the journals in question. Ask them if they would approve of this arrangement.
Dave