Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish. I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day!
You'll want to sign up with Distributed Proofreaders: https://pgdp.net Eric Hellman Executive Director Project Gutenberg If you appreciate the work we do, donations are always appreciated! https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/
On Jan 4, 2026, at 12:29 PM, Selin Doğru via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> wrote:
Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish.
I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day! --
From the mailing list: "gutvol-d" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org>> View this on the Web: <https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/5XXPGAHGRCMTIV6DKYBJEG7WLOTMWJOT/> Too much mail? Change your delivery setting to: "digest" here: <https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/>
Welcome Selin, As you may be aware, we still have zero books in Turkish in Project Gutenberg. This is also due to the script reform, that took place in 1928, which means very few books in modern Turkish are in the (United States) public domain, which is basically books published before 1931, and probably very few are available in scan form in any of the main archives (archive.org or google books). You can try some things at PGDP.net, and if you like this, and can find a suitable title, you might be able to produce the first Turkish language contribution. (But get into the details of getting a copyright clearance before moving ahead). I think, for now, however, we have less need for translations from or to Turkish. Jeroen. Selin Doğru via gutvol-d schreef op 2026-01-04 18:29:
Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish.
I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day!
As Eric mentioned, Proofreading happens at Distributed Proofreaders, not at Project Gutenberg. And at Distributed Proofreaders we do not do translation. We work only on published books that are old enough to no longer have copyright protection in the United States. If you did want to translate a book, you would need to: 1. Find a book without copyright protection in the US. 2. Clear that book with Project Gutenberg's Copyright team. 3. Translate it, and declare your translation to be in the Public Domain (copyright-free) 4. Convert your translation into a form suitable for Project Gutenberg to publish. 5. Upload the translation to Project Gutenberg yourself. Distributed Proofreaders would not be involved in any of that; it would be entirely your own effort. Best wishes, and thanks for your interest, Walt On 1/4/2026 12:29 PM, Selin Doğru via gutvol-d wrote:
Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish.
I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day!
Also be aware that translations are copyrightable even if the source material is out of copyright. In The United States copyright is actually very hard to avoid. Failing to claim a copyright is not enough, you must explicitly /*disclaim*/ one. Even then it may be possible to revoke the disclaimer. If you go ahead, be sure to preface your translation with: # The person who associated a work with this deed has *dedicated* the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. # You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. On 1/5/2026 6:18 AM, Walt Farrell via gutvol-d wrote:
As Eric mentioned, Proofreading happens at Distributed Proofreaders, not at Project Gutenberg.
And at Distributed Proofreaders we do not do translation. We work only on published books that are old enough to no longer have copyright protection in the United States. If you did want to translate a book, you would need to: 1. Find a book without copyright protection in the US. 2. Clear that book with Project Gutenberg's Copyright team. 3. Translate it, and declare your translation to be in the Public Domain (copyright-free) 4. Convert your translation into a form suitable for Project Gutenberg to publish. 5. Upload the translation to Project Gutenberg yourself.
Distributed Proofreaders would not be involved in any of that; it would be entirely your own effort.
Best wishes, and thanks for your interest, Walt On 1/4/2026 12:29 PM, Selin Doğru via gutvol-d wrote:
Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish.
I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day!
In 2012 I posted 41325 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41325), a Japanese translation of Christopher Morley’s “The Haunted Bookshop”. The submission was accompanied by this letter: Michael S. Hart Founder, Project Gutenberg 405 West Elm Street Urbana IL, 61801-3231, USA Dear Project Gutenberg: I am the sole copyright holder for the book, "Yureishoten" (Japanese translation of "The Haunted Bookshop" (1919) by Christopher Morley). I offer this work as public domain. (This gives up all rights, including that other people could reprint or profit without my permission or involvement or royalties.) It gives me pleasure to grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive rights to distribute this book in electronic form through Project Gutenberg Web sites, CDs or other current and future formats. No royalties are due for these rights. Sincerely, Kiyotoshi Hayashi (I removed his email address for privacy.) I don’t know who drafted/suggested the letter for inclusion in the submission—probably Greg. Something like it should be sufficient for PG’s purposes, but that would be Eric’s determinatioin. Al From: Lee Passey via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: January 5, 2026 5:24 PM To: Walt Farrell via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Cc: Lee Passey <lee@novomail.net> Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Translation Also be aware that translations are copyrightable even if the source material is out of copyright. In The United States copyright is actually very hard to avoid. Failing to claim a copyright is not enough, you must explicitly *disclaim* one. Even then it may be possible to revoke the disclaimer. If you go ahead, be sure to preface your translation with: * The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. * You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. On 1/5/2026 6:18 AM, Walt Farrell via gutvol-d wrote: As Eric mentioned, Proofreading happens at Distributed Proofreaders, not at Project Gutenberg. And at Distributed Proofreaders we do not do translation. We work only on published books that are old enough to no longer have copyright protection in the United States. If you did want to translate a book, you would need to: 1. Find a book without copyright protection in the US. 2. Clear that book with Project Gutenberg's Copyright team. 3. Translate it, and declare your translation to be in the Public Domain (copyright-free) 4. Convert your translation into a form suitable for Project Gutenberg to publish. 5. Upload the translation to Project Gutenberg yourself. Distributed Proofreaders would not be involved in any of that; it would be entirely your own effort. Best wishes, and thanks for your interest, Walt On 1/4/2026 12:29 PM, Selin Doğru via gutvol-d wrote: Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish. I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day!
Thanks, Al. If that work came to us today, we would insist that the rightsholder use CC0, a lawyer-approved dedication of rights to the public domain. That is apart from the question of whether it would be acceptable under our collection development policy; a self-published translation is still a self published work. Eric Hellman Executive Director Project Gutenberg If you appreciate the work we do, donations are always appreciated! https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/
On Jan 5, 2026, at 11:41 PM, ajhaines via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> wrote:
In 2012 I posted 41325 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41325), a Japanese translation of Christopher Morley’s “The Haunted Bookshop”. The submission was accompanied by this letter:
Michael S. Hart Founder, Project Gutenberg 405 West Elm Street Urbana IL, 61801-3231, USA Dear Project Gutenberg: I am the sole copyright holder for the book, "Yureishoten" (Japanese translation of "The Haunted Bookshop" (1919) by Christopher Morley). I offer this work as public domain. (This gives up all rights, including that other people could reprint or profit without my permission or involvement or royalties.) It gives me pleasure to grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive rights to distribute this book in electronic form through Project Gutenberg Web sites, CDs or other current and future formats. No royalties are due for these rights. Sincerely, Kiyotoshi Hayashi (I removed his email address for privacy.)
I don’t know who drafted/suggested the letter for inclusion in the submission—probably Greg. Something like it should be sufficient for PG’s purposes, but that would be Eric’s determinatioin.
Al
From: Lee Passey via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org>> Sent: January 5, 2026 5:24 PM To: Walt Farrell via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org>> Cc: Lee Passey <lee@novomail.net <mailto:lee@novomail.net>> Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Translation
Also be aware that translations are copyrightable even if the source material is out of copyright. In The United States copyright is actually very hard to avoid. Failing to claim a copyright is not enough, you must explicitly *disclaim* one. Even then it may be possible to revoke the disclaimer. If you go ahead, be sure to preface your translation with: · The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. · You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. On 1/5/2026 6:18 AM, Walt Farrell via gutvol-d wrote:
As Eric mentioned, Proofreading happens at Distributed Proofreaders, not at Project Gutenberg.
And at Distributed Proofreaders we do not do translation. We work only on published books that are old enough to no longer have copyright protection in the United States. If you did want to translate a book, you would need to: 1. Find a book without copyright protection in the US. 2. Clear that book with Project Gutenberg's Copyright team. 3. Translate it, and declare your translation to be in the Public Domain (copyright-free) 4. Convert your translation into a form suitable for Project Gutenberg to publish. 5. Upload the translation to Project Gutenberg yourself.
Distributed Proofreaders would not be involved in any of that; it would be entirely your own effort.
Best wishes, and thanks for your interest, Walt On 1/4/2026 12:29 PM, Selin Doğru via gutvol-d wrote:
Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish.
I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day!
--
From the mailing list: "gutvol-d" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org>> View this on the Web: <https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/6TB3Q7GVHNW674YNKSPJEPQDVGCHKHS4/> Too much mail? Change your delivery setting to: "digest" here: <https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/>
Given what I’ve read in this thread, it might be far simpler to refer Selin to PG’s Self-Publishing site (https://self.gutenberg.org/. Al From: Eric Hellman <eric@hellman.net> Sent: January 6, 2026 9:19 AM To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Cc: ajhaines <ajhaines@shaw.ca> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] Translation Thanks, Al. If that work came to us today, we would insist that the rightsholder use CC0, a lawyer-approved dedication of rights to the public domain. That is apart from the question of whether it would be acceptable under our collection development policy; a self-published translation is still a self published work. Eric Hellman Executive Director Project Gutenberg If you appreciate the work we do, donations are always appreciated! https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/ On Jan 5, 2026, at 11:41 PM, ajhaines via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> > wrote: In 2012 I posted 41325 ( <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41325> https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41325), a Japanese translation of Christopher Morley’s “The Haunted Bookshop”. The submission was accompanied by this letter: Michael S. Hart Founder, Project Gutenberg 405 West Elm Street Urbana IL, 61801-3231, USA Dear Project Gutenberg: I am the sole copyright holder for the book, "Yureishoten" (Japanese translation of "The Haunted Bookshop" (1919) by Christopher Morley). I offer this work as public domain. (This gives up all rights, including that other people could reprint or profit without my permission or involvement or royalties.) It gives me pleasure to grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive rights to distribute this book in electronic form through Project Gutenberg Web sites, CDs or other current and future formats. No royalties are due for these rights. Sincerely, Kiyotoshi Hayashi (I removed his email address for privacy.) I don’t know who drafted/suggested the letter for inclusion in the submission—probably Greg. Something like it should be sufficient for PG’s purposes, but that would be Eric’s determinatioin. Al From: Lee Passey via gutvol-d < <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: January 5, 2026 5:24 PM To: Walt Farrell via gutvol-d < <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Cc: Lee Passey < <mailto:lee@novomail.net> lee@novomail.net> Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Translation Also be aware that translations are copyrightable even if the source material is out of copyright. In The United States copyright is actually very hard to avoid. Failing to claim a copyright is not enough, you must explicitly *disclaim* one. Even then it may be possible to revoke the disclaimer. If you go ahead, be sure to preface your translation with: * The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. * You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. On 1/5/2026 6:18 AM, Walt Farrell via gutvol-d wrote: As Eric mentioned, Proofreading happens at Distributed Proofreaders, not at Project Gutenberg. And at Distributed Proofreaders we do not do translation. We work only on published books that are old enough to no longer have copyright protection in the United States. If you did want to translate a book, you would need to: 1. Find a book without copyright protection in the US. 2. Clear that book with Project Gutenberg's Copyright team. 3. Translate it, and declare your translation to be in the Public Domain (copyright-free) 4. Convert your translation into a form suitable for Project Gutenberg to publish. 5. Upload the translation to Project Gutenberg yourself. Distributed Proofreaders would not be involved in any of that; it would be entirely your own effort. Best wishes, and thanks for your interest, Walt On 1/4/2026 12:29 PM, Selin Doğru via gutvol-d wrote: Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish. I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day! -- From the mailing list: "gutvol-d" < <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> View this on the Web: < <https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/6TB3Q7GVHNW674YNKSPJEPQDVGCHKHS4/> https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/6TB3Q7GVHNW674YNKSPJEPQDVGCHKHS4/> Too much mail? Change your delivery setting to: "digest" here: < <https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/> https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/>
This email exchange suggests something that has been on my mind lately. There are several books in the PG collection where the original is in the public domain but there are no translations in the public domain. One of these is Le chateâu des Carpathes by Jules Verne. I had been wanting to read it and while I studied French for several years in high school it didn't "take" so I could have saved my teachers a lot of trouble by skipping those classes. I had experimented with Google Translate and found out something interesting. If you tell Google Translate to translate the whole novel by linking to the web page it does a terrible job, but if you feed it a few pages at a time it does a pretty good job. It might not be a perfect translation, but it's readable. I was planning on doing that with a few PG titles for my personal use. I've already done one of these, and it was quite tedious work but I ended up with a nice text file wrapped to 80 columns (using the roff utility) which I marked up with RST and used the pandoc utility to make a good EPUB from. It came out pretty well. Pandoc could just as easily make a web page. If there was a way to put a Google Translate translation into the public domain I could donate these to PG. Would that be possible? James Simmons On Mon, Jan 5, 2026 at 10:42 PM ajhaines via gutvol-d < gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> wrote:
In 2012 I posted 41325 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41325), a Japanese translation of Christopher Morley’s “The Haunted Bookshop”. The submission was accompanied by this letter:
Michael S. Hart
Founder, Project Gutenberg
405 West Elm Street
Urbana IL, 61801-3231, USA
Dear Project Gutenberg:
I am the sole copyright holder for the book, "Yureishoten" (Japanese
translation of "The Haunted Bookshop" (1919) by Christopher Morley).
I offer this work as public domain. (This gives up all rights,
including that other people could reprint or profit without my
permission or involvement or royalties.) It gives me pleasure to
grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive rights
to distribute this book in electronic form through Project Gutenberg
Web sites, CDs or other current and future formats. No royalties
are due for these rights.
Sincerely,
Kiyotoshi Hayashi
(I removed his email address for privacy.)
I don’t know who drafted/suggested the letter for inclusion in the submission—probably Greg. Something like it should be sufficient for PG’s purposes, but that would be Eric’s determinatioin.
Al
*From:* Lee Passey via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> *Sent:* January 5, 2026 5:24 PM *To:* Walt Farrell via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> *Cc:* Lee Passey <lee@novomail.net> *Subject:* [gutvol-d] Re: Translation
Also be aware that translations are copyrightable even if the source material is out of copyright. In The United States copyright is actually very hard to avoid. Failing to claim a copyright is not enough, you must explicitly **disclaim** one. Even then it may be possible to revoke the disclaimer. If you go ahead, be sure to preface your translation with:
· The person who associated a work with this deed has *dedicated* the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.
· You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
On 1/5/2026 6:18 AM, Walt Farrell via gutvol-d wrote:
As Eric mentioned, Proofreading happens at Distributed Proofreaders, not at Project Gutenberg.
And at Distributed Proofreaders we do not do translation. We work only on published books that are old enough to no longer have copyright protection in the United States. If you did want to translate a book, you would need to:
1. Find a book without copyright protection in the US.
2. Clear that book with Project Gutenberg's Copyright team.
3. Translate it, and declare your translation to be in the Public Domain (copyright-free)
4. Convert your translation into a form suitable for Project Gutenberg to publish.
5. Upload the translation to Project Gutenberg yourself.
Distributed Proofreaders would not be involved in any of that; it would be entirely your own effort.
Best wishes, and thanks for your interest,
Walt
On 1/4/2026 12:29 PM, Selin Doğru via gutvol-d wrote:
Hello Dear Sir/Madam,
My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about.
I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish.
I'll be waiting for your reply..
Have a great day!
--
From the mailing list: "gutvol-d" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> View this on the Web: < https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/6TB3Q7GVHNW674YNKSPJEPQDVGCHKHS4/>
Too much mail? Change your delivery setting to: "digest" here: < https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/>
Yes, possibly. In recent conversations with Gemini I asked a very similar question regarding ownership and copyright of generated code (which is still pretty sub-standard, BTW). Its response was that it was only a tool, and that Google could claim no ownership of content produced with that tool, any more than Royal could claim rights to a manuscript typed on one of its typewriters. IANLAL, but as I mentioned earlier, U.S. law has an almost inescapable bias towards applying copyright to everything, despite the wishes of its creator. I believe that if one were to use a tool such as AI to perform a translation, the copyright holder would be the one using the tool, not the one owning the tool. I believe that if you were to use Google Translate to create a translation, you would have a new copyrighted work, and you would be the copyright holder. You could then dedicate the work to the pubic domain. Is it out of copyright at that point? Probably not, but you might be barred by collateral estoppel from enforcing it in the future, and if you can't enforce the copyright it will be essentially copyright free. Maybe I'll ask Gemini for its opinion on the matter, knowing that it will probably invent an answer 😉. BTW. my earlier verbiage for dedicating something to the public domain was a direct quote from the Creative Commons web site, as close to a canonical answer as you can get in these uncertain times. On 1/6/2026 11:26 AM, James Simmons via gutvol-d wrote:
This email exchange suggests something that has been on my mind lately. There are several books in the PG collection where the original is in the public domain but there are no translations in the public domain. One of these is Le chateâu des Carpathes by Jules Verne. I had been wanting to read it and while I studied French for several years in high school it didn't "take" so I could have saved my teachers a lot of trouble by skipping those classes.
I had experimented with Google Translate and found out something interesting. If you tell Google Translate to translate the whole novel by linking to the web page it does a terrible job, but if you feed it a few pages at a time it does a pretty good job. It might not be a perfect translation, but it's readable.
I was planning on doing that with a few PG titles for my personal use. I've already done one of these, and it was quite tedious work but I ended up with a nice text file wrapped to 80 columns (using the roff utility) which I marked up with RST and used the pandoc utility to make a good EPUB from. It came out pretty well. Pandoc could just as easily make a web page.
If there was a way to put a Google Translate translation into the public domain I could donate these to PG.
Would that be possible?
James Simmons
This is all still playing out in the U.S. courts, ultimately, but to date the courts (and thus the Copyright Office) seem to have been holding that claim to copyright originates with human creativity, and that works generated by software have no standing for copyright claim without substantial human creative choice being a part of the process. A machine translation from one text to another wouldn't seem to qualify. (But, IANAL either.) https://copyright.gov/ai/ai_policy_guidance.pdf https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10922 Dan On Tue, Jan 6, 2026, at 4:51 PM, Lee Passey via gutvol-d wrote:
IANLAL, but as I mentioned earlier, U.S. law has an almost inescapable bias towards applying copyright to everything, despite the wishes of its creator. I believe that if one were to use a tool such as AI to perform a translation, the copyright holder would be the one using the tool, not the one owning the tool.
I believe that if you were to use Google Translate to create a translation, you would have a new copyrighted work, and you would be the copyright holder.
Not sure to what extent current language translation should be considered "AI", but one can get a sense of the coming issues by searching on "copyright of materials generated by ai". In USA, but not necessarily in other countries, current bias is against giving copyright where AI was the primary form of generation — but not if it is only used as a "tool" as part of a larger human-creative process. I think one might be concerned of a coming mess of translations and other "AI" generation based on "risen to public domain" works — and of human beings claiming copyright on parts of that mess. Jim Adcock ________________________________ From: Lee Passey via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 6, 2026 1:51 PM To: James Simmons via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Cc: Lee Passey <lee@novomail.net> Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Translation Yes, possibly. In recent conversations with Gemini I asked a very similar question regarding ownership and copyright of generated code (which is still pretty sub-standard, BTW). Its response was that it was only a tool, and that Google could claim no ownership of content produced with that tool, any more than Royal could claim rights to a manuscript typed on one of its typewriters. IANLAL, but as I mentioned earlier, U.S. law has an almost inescapable bias towards applying copyright to everything, despite the wishes of its creator. I believe that if one were to use a tool such as AI to perform a translation, the copyright holder would be the one using the tool, not the one owning the tool. I believe that if you were to use Google Translate to create a translation, you would have a new copyrighted work, and you would be the copyright holder. You could then dedicate the work to the pubic domain. Is it out of copyright at that point? Probably not, but you might be barred by collateral estoppel from enforcing it in the future, and if you can't enforce the copyright it will be essentially copyright free. Maybe I'll ask Gemini for its opinion on the matter, knowing that it will probably invent an answer 😉. BTW. my earlier verbiage for dedicating something to the public domain was a direct quote from the Creative Commons web site, as close to a canonical answer as you can get in these uncertain times. On 1/6/2026 11:26 AM, James Simmons via gutvol-d wrote:
This email exchange suggests something that has been on my mind lately. There are several books in the PG collection where the original is in the public domain but there are no translations in the public domain. One of these is Le chateâu des Carpathes by Jules Verne. I had been wanting to read it and while I studied French for several years in high school it didn't "take" so I could have saved my teachers a lot of trouble by skipping those classes.
I had experimented with Google Translate and found out something interesting. If you tell Google Translate to translate the whole novel by linking to the web page it does a terrible job, but if you feed it a few pages at a time it does a pretty good job. It might not be a perfect translation, but it's readable.
I was planning on doing that with a few PG titles for my personal use. I've already done one of these, and it was quite tedious work but I ended up with a nice text file wrapped to 80 columns (using the roff utility) which I marked up with RST and used the pandoc utility to make a good EPUB from. It came out pretty well. Pandoc could just as easily make a web page.
If there was a way to put a Google Translate translation into the public domain I could donate these to PG.
Would that be possible?
James Simmons
--
From the mailing list: "gutvol-d" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> View this on the Web: <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.pglaf.org%2Farchives%2Flist%2Fgutvol-d%40lists.pglaf.org%2Fmessage%2FZNUDAGZNNSBN4VRRW6AX4P4ANQGP6JQ5%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7Cc5a25c896f624c2c3feb08de4d6f5b7d%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C639033337823358117%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Vr3iBVvIRt5AP1mVLp%2F%2B1EWS%2BzI91Ej%2BvHmWgjdnOg4%3D&reserved=0<https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/ZNUDAGZNNSBN4VRRW6AX4P4ANQGP6JQ5/>> Too much mail? Change your delivery setting to: "digest" here: <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.pglaf.org%2Fmailman3%2Flists%2Fgutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7Cc5a25c896f624c2c3feb08de4d6f5b7d%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C639033337823388129%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=MfP4WLnbobWROZYdShAksahicKnUBbej8eotTnMI6p0%3D&reserved=0<https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/>>
Copyright works on the premise that creating a new creative work is hard and requires a considerable investment. When machines start creating translations, the investment becomes far smaller, and as a result, a copyright on such "works" has little value, because everybody who requires a translation can ask the AI to produce yet another translation (and with improved AI's, the quality will probably be better anyway, although I think it will take a long time before AI can replace humans with regard to literary works). -- here I am disregarding the initial investment that goes into building the AI itself. (Which is now a complete bubble, in which a mere million is considered pocket change.) Of course, the current promoters of AI want to both have their cake and eat it, and may at the same time try to claim copyright on their machines output, and deny rewarding the value extracted from our collective public (and not so public) cultural domain.... I don't know yet how the law will work out in the long term, but for now, pure AI output is public domain ab initio, unless it can be shown to be derived from actual copyrighted works (in which case it is most likely copyright infringement). Jeroen. James Adcock via gutvol-d schreef op 2026-01-07 02:47:
Not sure to what extent current language translation should be considered "AI", but one can get a sense of the coming issues by searching on "copyright of materials generated by ai".
In USA, but not necessarily in other countries, current bias is against giving copyright where AI was the primary form of generation — but not if it is only used as a "tool" as part of a larger human-creative process.
I think one might be concerned of a coming mess of translations and other "AI" generation based on "risen to public domain" works — and of human beings claiming copyright on parts of that mess.
Jim Adcock
Note that an independent translation of a public domain work would itself be a self published work, and thus not eligible for the gutenberg.org collection, regardless of copyright status. https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/collection_development.html Eric Hellman Executive Director Project Gutenberg
On Jan 5, 2026, at 9:18 AM, Walt Farrell via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> wrote:
As Eric mentioned, Proofreading happens at Distributed Proofreaders, not at Project Gutenberg.
And at Distributed Proofreaders we do not do translation. We work only on published books that are old enough to no longer have copyright protection in the United States. If you did want to translate a book, you would need to: 1. Find a book without copyright protection in the US. 2. Clear that book with Project Gutenberg's Copyright team. 3. Translate it, and declare your translation to be in the Public Domain (copyright-free) 4. Convert your translation into a form suitable for Project Gutenberg to publish. 5. Upload the translation to Project Gutenberg yourself.
Distributed Proofreaders would not be involved in any of that; it would be entirely your own effort.
Best wishes, and thanks for your interest, Walt On 1/4/2026 12:29 PM, Selin Doğru via gutvol-d wrote:
Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish.
I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day!
--
From the mailing list: "gutvol-d" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org <mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org>> View this on the Web: <https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/L4BSAXYZLFD2AH64B433TXKONHTI5RZV/> Too much mail? Change your delivery setting to: "digest" here: <https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/>
Interesting discussion. Perhaps I missed it, and if so I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't see anything in that policy that prohibits self-published works. It prohibits works that are unpublished and not distributed. But many authors self-publish by producing their books through Amazon as epub, or even physical books via print-on-demand services. If that were done, and then the author dedicated it to the Public Domain after at least one copy had been purchased, wouldn't it be eligible for the main Project Gutenberg collection? Walt On 1/7/2026 8:33 AM, Eric Hellman wrote:
Note that an independent translation of a public domain work would itself be a self published work, and thus not eligible for the gutenberg.org collection, regardless of copyright status.
https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/collection_development.html
I'm thinking that maybe archive.org might be a better home for this kind of content. I can easily create plain text, web page, EPUB and PDF versions of the titles I had in mind and post them there with the appropriate license. That might also take care of the "distribution" requirement for PG too. At least the titles would be available. James Simmons On Wed, Jan 7, 2026 at 4:08 PM Walter Farrell via gutvol-d < gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> wrote:
Interesting discussion.
Perhaps I missed it, and if so I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't see anything in that policy that prohibits self-published works. It prohibits works that are unpublished and not distributed. But many authors self-publish by producing their books through Amazon as epub, or even physical books via print-on-demand services. If that were done, and then the author dedicated it to the Public Domain after at least one copy had been purchased, wouldn't it be eligible for the main Project Gutenberg collection?
Walt
On 1/7/2026 8:33 AM, Eric Hellman wrote:
Note that an independent translation of a public domain work would itself be a self published work, and thus not eligible for the gutenberg.org collection, regardless of copyright status.
https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/collection_development.html -- From the mailing list: "gutvol-d" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> View this on the Web: < https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/TJHU23YTK6R4WHTX57P3WUIXH463H5AA/>
Too much mail? Change your delivery setting to: "digest" here: < https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/>
The collection development policy Eric linked to touches on this, but perhaps could be more explicit (emphasis below is mine): *"**Project Gutenberg worked with many different content types, including audio books, digitized sheet music, some movies, and quite a few *copyrighted items that were donated by contemporary authors*. By the early 2000s, it was clear that Project Gutenberg was *not as well-suited* for those different content types as for public domain literature. There are now many other outlets for these other types of works, including a *self-publishing portal* for contemporary authors that is operated by a Project Gutenberg affiliate."* The "Submitting your own work how-to" is much more explicit about it (again emphasis is mine): *"**Project Gutenberg’s collection is focused on older literary works for which copyright in the US has expired. *Contemporary works are not being accepted *for the collection.* * * *"Instead, our partner, the World Library Foundation runs **self.gutenberg.org**, the Project Gutenberg self-publishing portal. This is a collection of author-contributed works."* https://www.gutenberg.org/help/submitting_your_own_work.html Dan On Wed, Jan 7, 2026, at 5:08 PM, Walter Farrell via gutvol-d wrote:
Interesting discussion.
Perhaps I missed it, and if so I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't see anything in that policy that prohibits self-published works. It prohibits works that are unpublished and not distributed. But many authors self-publish by producing their books through Amazon as epub, or even physical books via print-on-demand services. If that were done, and then the author dedicated it to the Public Domain after at least one copy had been purchased, wouldn't it be eligible for the main Project Gutenberg collection?
Yes, Dan, that is much more clear. Thanks! On 1/7/2026 7:36 PM, Dan Lowe wrote:
The "Submitting your own work how-to" is much more explicit about it (again emphasis is mine):
/"//Project Gutenberg’s collection is focused on older literary works for which copyright in the US has expired. *Contemporary works are not being accepted *for the collection./ / / /"Instead, our partner, the World Library Foundation runs //self.gutenberg.org/ <https://self.gutenberg.org/>/, the Project Gutenberg self-publishing portal. This is a collection of author-contributed works."/
https://www.gutenberg.org/help/submitting_your_own_work.html
And then Eric wrote:
The short answer is no, mere "publication" does not make a work eligible for the gutenberg.org collection under the current policy as I interpret it.
That policy deserves some robust discussion and consultation to clarify what it should mean in the current context of publication and Publication.I think in the coming months it would be good to find a way to have that discussion. Thanks, Eric. I agree, especially with the other info Dan pointed out. But also I agree that more discussion would be beneficial.
-- Walt
The short answer is no, mere "publication" does not make a work eligible for the gutenberg.org collection under the current policy as I interpret it. That policy deserves some robust discussion and consultation to clarify what it should mean in the current context of publication and Publication.I think in the coming months it would be good to find a way to have that discussion. Eric
On Jan 7, 2026, at 5:08 PM, Walter Farrell via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> wrote:
Interesting discussion.
Perhaps I missed it, and if so I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't see anything in that policy that prohibits self-published works. It prohibits works that are unpublished and not distributed. But many authors self-publish by producing their books through Amazon as epub, or even physical books via print-on-demand services. If that were done, and then the author dedicated it to the Public Domain after at least one copy had been purchased, wouldn't it be eligible for the main Project Gutenberg collection?
Walt
On 1/7/2026 8:33 AM, Eric Hellman wrote:
Note that an independent translation of a public domain work would itself be a self published work, and thus not eligible for the gutenberg.org collection, regardless of copyright status.
https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/collection_development.html -- From the mailing list: "gutvol-d" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> View this on the Web: <https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org/message/TJHU23YTK6R4WHTX57P3WUIXH463H5AA/> Too much mail? Change your delivery setting to: "digest" here: <https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman3/lists/gutvol-d.lists.pglaf.org/>
Selin, you might want to look at some of PG's old FAQs, particularly the Volunteers' FAQ at https://web.archive.org/web/20191203093834/http:/www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Cate... :FAQ Much of it is somewhat outdated, but its Section 7 is still useful, with information on PG's standards and expectations for text files. You might also look at PG's old HTML FAQ, particularly section H.4 Al From: Selin Doğru via gutvol-d <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: January 4, 2026 9:30 AM To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org Cc: Selin Doğru <dogruselin24@hotmail.com> Subject: [gutvol-d] Translation Hello Dear Sir/Madam, My name is Selin. I've decided to do volunteering as a proofreader in Gutenberg Project. I've completed necessary parts and ready to be part of the projects! I want to make more contributions. Translation is another area, i'm motivated, enthusiastic and experienced about. I want to make translations for this project, my native language is Turkish and i can translate Turkish to English, English to Turkish. I'll be waiting for your reply.. Have a great day!
participants (10)
-
ajhaines -
Dan Lowe -
Eric Hellman -
James Adcock -
James Simmons -
jeroen＠bohol.ph -
Lee Passey -
Selin Doğru -
Walt Farrell -
Walter Farrell