(Note that in any of these cases, you still can and should retain the copyright for your own translation – there’s no advantage to you in assigning it to your publisher, though many publishers may still ask you to.) Sometimes, of course, authors do retain copyright in their work, and in these cases they are indeed the ones in a position to grant translation rights – though even so, the bureaucracy of the rights negotiations is often handled by their publishers or agents and the rights can still only be formally acquired by whoever publishes your work. But unless they hold the copyright in their work, this document is legally meaningless, at least until such time as the actual copyright holder makes a deal with the would-be publisher of your translation. But authors don’t always fully comprehend that by selling their copyright they’ve also given up the right to assign translation rights to their work, so it may indeed happen that you ask a foreign-langua ge author for permission to translate their book and they cheerfully provide you with a document to that effect. The rights can’t be sold or given to you, because translation rights can only be held by publishing houses (or magazines). Now, if you happen to make friends with Gerhard Falkner and convince him that you’re the right person to translate his book, he can then turn to his publisher and ask them to assign the translation rights (usually for a fee – that’s a matter of negotiation) to whatever publisher will be printing your translation. This means that in Falkner’s original contract with his publisher, Berlin Verlag, he sold his copyright in the work, which means that it is no longer his to sell or give away. Have a look at the book’s copyright page (below), and you’ll see that the work has been copyrighted not in the name of the author but by the publisher.
I’ve just pulled a book off my shelf: Bruno by Gerhard Falkner, a terrific novella about a writer who gets obsessed with a wild bear that’s been terrorizing livestock in the Alps near where he’s doing a writing residency. In many cases, this is not actually the author. Translation rights can be assigned (sold or given away for free) only by the person or entity who holds copyright in the original work. Since there are still so many misconceptions circulating about translation rights and their acquisition, let me put together a thumbnail sketch of how it all works.
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