Re: licenses in non-English languages?

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>]

As someone who used to write licenses and still advises on them, I applaud
the sentiment but question the practicality. It is expensive enough to
write licenses, which are adequate, in English, but the costs of producing
watertight translations must add much more cost. In any case I would
suspect that, a publisher of English language content does produce a
licenses translated into (say) French, that French license would need to
refer back to the original English master as the normative version. There
must be a normative version.


Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
From: Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 11:39 PM
Subject: licenses in non-English languages?


> This message is aimed primarily at publishers and vendors of electronic
> information, and of course librarians are welcome to chime in.  Today a
> colleague forwarded to me a message from a French librarians' listserve,
> in which the topic of license translation was raised.  These librarians
> stated that most/nearly all licenses for their information products (many
> of which are international journals and databases) come to them in
> English, either from the publisher or as a click license on the web.
>
> These librarians wonder if such licenses are available in French.  Good
> question, and not only for that language.  I've heard it said by many
> librarians from non-Anglo countries that licenses are presented to them in
> English and that it is not easy to cope with this, for a number of
> reasons.  This seems a real disservice to the global library and user
> community, doesn' it?
>
> So, my question to the information provider community is:  which of you
> have made your licenses available in foreign languages as well as English,
> and in what languages have you done so?  Of course, I could ask which
> non-English language provider has also made their license available in
> English.  And liblicense-l would surely like to hear from librarians for
> whom English-only is a problem.  Speak up.
>
> Sincerely, Ann Okerson
> liblicense-l moderator
> ann.okerson@yale.edu
>