Unlicensed Book Translations

I’ve had books translated into nine different languages. The rotating banner at the top of my blog shows some of them.

A reader pointed me at a translation that I wasn’t aware of: FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS in Russian. Unfortunately, the translator didn’t get rights to do so before translating it.

This is not the first time this has happened. For future reference, I’m putting up a post about my response in this situation.

The fact that someone thinks that Allan and I did a good enough job on the book that they spent their own time and energy to translate it is a huge compliment. It really is. It’s incredibly flattering.

But it eliminates any hope the publisher (in this case, myself) has of selling translation rights for this book.

This translator has also put this under a Creative Commons license. As they’re not the copyright holder of the original work, they also don’t have the right to change the license. As the book says, the license is “all rights reserved.”

I’ve sent the site a nice note, asking them to take it down.

Translation rights for my books are available, either from No Starch Press or myself, depending on the book. Any publisher is happy to sell translation rights.

I sell books to support my family. Translation income is part of that. So, like any author, I have to politely insist that some of my biggest fans not translate my work.