Copyright

[toussaint]

In my book, "Bokassa's Last Apostle" I have a chapter which involves an exorcism carried out by a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. When I committed myself to this I must admit I had forgotten that in the UK they use "polari" instead of Latin in their services. (Polari is a largely dead made-up language used by gay men back in the 50's so they could talk openly in public without being understood by straight people). It took the best part of a day to google enough voccabulary and compile a dictionary and then I wrote the dialogue and translated the Catholic rite of exorcism (I used an extract from here) and the Our Father into polari. The Manchester Chapter of the Sisters have translated the entire text of the Bible into polari and the glossary at the end was particularly useful. On their website they say it is copyright. I included one of the psalms from their site as a reading in the service.

 

Assuming all of the original texts above are out of copyright, can the Sisters claim to have copyrighted the voccabulary of a language? Or the translation? The voccabulary of Polari is fairly limited and they had to introduce several new terms of their own: Jodie Crystal = Christ, Sadie = the devil, Fantabulosa Fairy = Holy Ghost, etc.

 

People coin new words in English every day. If I am re-using words in polari coined by someone else, is that a breach of copyright? Or can a translation be considered copyright? Is this going to be a problem for me?

 

HELP!

 

To give you a flavour, here's an extract including my translation of the Our Father (most people in the west are familiar with the text, so you can see how it works from the context) :

 

 

'Omis, Omi-palones, and Fabe Donnas (she shot a glance at Ricqui), we have trolled down here to chuck out a nana fairy which is being a right old nuisance to Everton and Ricqui. Let us begin by screeching the "Our Auntie",' and everyone read from their cards:

 

'"Our Auntie, who art in Heaven, how fabulosa is your name, thy Duchy come, may you have what you fancy, right here or up in heaven, parker unto us our pannam this journo, and let us off our kertervers, as we let off those who kertervereth agaist us and lau us nanti into kerterverdom, but get us out of nana, for thine is the Duchy the power and the fabeness for ever and ever Larlou."'

 

'Duchess

[Graeme]

If the language is made up, it should be possible to copyright it, but it sounds like that they didn't make it up, so, no, I don't believe they can copyright that.

 

However, they can certainly copyright a translation since they invested time and effort into doing that translation. That doesn't stop someone else also translating the original texts.

[Mark Arbour]

In my book, "Bokassa's Last Apostle" I have a chapter which involves an exorcism carried out by a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. When I committed myself to this I must admit I had forgotten that in the UK they use "polari" instead of Latin in their services. (Polari is a largely dead made-up language used by gay men back in the 50's so they could talk openly in public without being understood by straight people). It took the best part of a day to google enough voccabulary and compile a dictionary and then I wrote the dialogue and translated the Catholic rite of exorcism (I used an extract from here) and the Our Father into polari. The Manchester Chapter of the Sisters have translated the entire text of the Bible into polari and the glossary at the end was particularly useful. On their website they say it is copyright. I included one of the psalms from their site as a reading in the service.

 

Assuming all of the original texts above are out of copyright, can the Sisters claim to have copyrighted the voccabulary of a language? Or the translation? The voccabulary of Polari is fairly limited and they had to introduce several new terms of their own: Jodie Crystal = Christ, Sadie = the devil, Fantabulosa Fairy = Holy Ghost, etc.

 

People coin new words in English every day. If I am re-using words in polari coined by someone else, is that a breach of copyright? Or can a translation be considered copyright? Is this going to be a problem for me?

 

HELP!

 

To give you a flavour, here's an extract including my translation of the Our Father (most people in the west are familiar with the text, so you can see how it works from the context) :

 

 

 

Any reply posts actually IN polari get bonus points!

 

I ran across Polari when I was researching "Chronicles of an Academic Predator." It kind of intrigued me.

 

As for the copyright issue, I'm with Graeme. Don't sweat it.

[Linxe Termoil]

Introduction Copyright law originated in the United Kingdom from a concept of common law; the Statute of Anne 1709. It became statutory with the passing of the Copyright Act 1911. The current act is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

 

Rights covered

 

The law gives the creators of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic works, sound recordings, broadcasts, films and typographical arrangement of published editions, rights to control the ways in which their material may be used.

 

Types of work protected

 

1. Literary song lyrics, manuscripts, manuals, computer programs, commercial documents, leaflets, newsletters & articles etc.

When rights occurCopyright is an automatic right and arises whenever an individual or company creates a work. To qualify, a work should be regarded as original, and exhibits a degree of labour, skill or judgement.

 

Interpretation is related to the independent creation rather than the idea behind the creation. For example, your idea for a book would not itself be protected, but the actual content of a book you write would be. In other words, someone else is still entitled to write their own book around the same idea, provided they do not directly copy or adapt yours to do so.

 

Names, titles, short phrases and colours are not generally considered unique or substantial enough to be covered, but a creation, such as a logo, that combines these elements may be.

 

In short, work that expresses an idea may be protected, but not the idea behind it.

 

[/Quote]

 

 

 

 

There you go, hope that helps. And, I'd just like to state that, considering they took the time to make an entire dictionary, it's highly unlikely that they would be bothered by your using it. It'd be like Webster or something trying to copy right the English language. It just wouldn't happen.

 

~That Law Guy

 

 

 

[toussaint]

Just got the weekly digest... Thanks guys! Actually, I went back and read the Sisters' website again. It turns out the project was based at one of the Manchester (England) universities and revolved around a computer translation program. Apparently they just input an english-polari dictionary, the text of the bible and pressed return! (something of a simplification, but that's the general idea.)

 

I guess when the day eventually comes around that's what publishers have lawyers for, but I'm not going to stress about infringing copyright on here.

 

If you're intrerested Mark, the links in my original post go their dictionary and some texts about polari. I certainly had great fun writing the polari dialogue and when I get that chapter online I'll add post a glossary as well.