Legal Tools Translation/4.0/Amharic

Jurisdictions

Ehiopia

Translation Status

4.0: In progress.
CC0: Not started.

Key dates

First draft was submitted: 1/12/2016
Public comment period: 10/14/2016
Translation officially published:

Translation team

• Yohannes Tesfaye: reviewer
• Solomon Mekonnen: reviewer

Translation process

After a draft was submitted, a team of Amharic-speaking lawyers did the review. The translators sent a report, some notes and a draft, to be reviewed by a team from CC Ethiopia. The team and the translators discussed and sent a report of their agreed-upon decisions.

Key translation decisions and challenges

There were some spelling, punctuation and format errors, a few missing (skipped) words, and inaccurate terminologies, which have been addressed and corrected by the reviewers.

Capitalizations

Amharic does not have uppercase and lowercase letters. This was a challenge as the CC translation guide expressly requires that words and phrases capitalized in the English version should also be capitalized in corresponding translations. Therefore, words capitalized in the English version are currently not capitalized in the Amharic (as that is not an option in Amharic). But these words can be distinguished using bold letters, underlining or larger fonts. The reviewers request feedback from CC headquarter in this regard.

Abbreviations

Some abbreviations in the source file (such as "BY NC SA" and "URI") do not have any Amharic equivalents. To use an Amharic abbreviation for "BY NC SA", for instance, would be confusing. Therefore, the translator has opted to use the full words in Amharic (ie. Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike). In the case of "URI", however, there is no Amharic equivalent for it (whether abbreviated or unabbreviated). Therefore, the translator has written "URI" using Amharic letters and used the English abbreviation in parenthesis for clarification.

Terminology

Some of the issues that the reviewers have faced with regard to terminology have been outlined as follows:

Attribution

this word was originally translated as "አመንጪውን መጥቀስ" which literally means "mentioning the creator". But Solomon has clarified that attribution is more than just mentioning the creator and refers to providing a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material. Therefore, it has been corrected as "ዋቢ መረጃዎችን መጥቀስ", which literally means "indicating/mentioning reference information".

Material

this word was originally translated as "ስራ" in Amharic. But "ስራ" can also mean "work" in Amharic, which is an error that the translation expressly warns the translator to avoid, as it would exclude non-copyrightable materials such as database. Solomon had suggested that we use the term "ቁሳዊ የመረጃ ስብስብ" instead, which literally means "a collection of material information". But we have finally come up with the term "የሥራ ውጤት". This term literally means "products of work", but it is a better translation of "material" as it is broader than 'works' and would include database and other non-copyrightable materials.

"Fair use" and "fair dealing"

these terms do not have Amharic equivalents. The translator had translated both as just "አግባብ ያለው አጠቃቀም", which only addresses "fair use". But both terms are now translated as closely as possible and the English terms have been used in parenthesis to avoid confusion.

Downstream recipients

this term was originally translated as "የሥር ወይም ቀጣይ ተቀባዮች", which literally means "lower or next recipients", which was vague. Therefore, it has been corrected as "የተቀባይ ተቀባዮች", which literally means "recipients of recipients", but which clearly conveys the meaning "people who receive the license from persons other than the original licensor".

Draft translation files

To be published

FINAL translation files

To be published