Dear all
I`m really glad to see such a lively discussion going on the list. It
is a great pleasure to see it happening now and in such a spontaneous
and vibrant way. I`ve been reading all the messages with much
interest and at this point I would like to add my insights to your
comments. Additionally, I would like to inform you about some
decisions that we have reached at CC-HQ regarding translation matters
in particular.
I think the Arab world situation is very peculiar -not only for CC of
course, but for many other projects going on in the region that have
been trying to aiming at increasing the content produced in the Arabic
language, as Wikipedia for example-.
Indeed we do have different “english(s)”, the American, the British,
Australian, Canadian etc.
But the Arab world is different, as you all know, not only because 22
countries have officially opted for Arabic as their official language,
but also because all of them have always been inspired by a certain
sense of unity and common heritage and culture.
It would be a pity, indeed, not to take this cultural factor into
account when it comes to create a regional project for the Arab world.
At the same time, we all know that the Arabic language we speak daily
in the countries we live in is different from place to place, not only
in pronunciations and words that sometime we use, but also in the
different meanings we attribute sometime to the same word from country
to country.
When it comes to a project such CC is, which is also related to the
legal framework of each country, we should of course also take this
diversity factor into account.
Let me go back to the history of CC in the Arab region. Anas Tawileh,
that we all know, started to talk about Creative Commons in his very
useful Arab Commons portal. Rami Olwan and Ziad Maraqa started to port
the licenses in Jordan in 2004 while Hala Essalmawi officially
established it in Egypt. Few years later, also Khaled Kouba and Nafaa
Laribi started the project in Tunisia. So far, those are the official
CC projects run in the Arab region (where signed MOUs exists), whereas
Syria and Lebanon are starting right now and many other countries do
enjoy a vibrant CC community life despite the lack of an official
“chapter”.
When I started working with CC, almost two years ago, those MOUs in
Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia were already existing, while we were very
aware of the fact that many other Arab countries wanted to start their
own local project. So last year, Al Jazeera kindly gave CC the
opportunity to organize its first regional meeting in the Arab world,
during the TV station annual Forum in may.
This meeting aimed at discussing many issues concerning CC in the Arab
world, first of all the linguistic issues cause we were very aware
that, once the first jurisdiction was about to port, it would have
been a model for the other countries to come.
As you can understand, it would be pretty strange to have Creative
Commons translated in each of the 22 countries in different ways.
First of all, it would not be nice for Arabs, officially speaking the
same language and then calling CC with different names. Secondly, CC
is a new name, exactly like “blogging” and as you all know there was
no such a word in Arabic: it was proposed by somebody, looked strange
at the beginning, then was widely accepted by the community. I want to
draw your attention to the fact that, in many jurisdictions worldwide
(including the one I come from, Italy), Creative Commons was left in
the original english name cause no possibility to translate that idea
in the local idiom. We were advised by many people, both lawyers and
community people, that in the Arab world it wouldn`t have been so nice
to leave the name in english as it could have perceived as a “foreign”
project and too distant from local needs.
After debating online and during the Al Jazeera meeting, we agreed
that the best solution would have been to use the Jordanian
translation المشاع الإبداعي official Arabic name of CC, always leaving
Creative Commons in its original english version and in parenthesis,
in order to preserve the original brand and to make it recognizable
for people like Lebanese that were already extensively using CC
licenses with their english name.
The Al Jazeera Forum was attended by Rami Olwan and Ziad Maraqa from
the Jordanian team, who proposed that translation, by Nafaa Laribi
from the Tunisian team, by Joi Ito our CEO, Michelle Thorne and
Catharina Maracke from CC and by myself. In addition to this, some
external lawyers interested in CC from UAE, plus many active members
of the CC community (pioneers and CC early adopters in the Region)
where invited to attend and participate to the debate.
The debate was also attended by Mohamed al Said, a lawyer from Al
Jazeera, who gave his valuable insight, and by Mouwafaq who is a
prominent Al Jazeera translator (you have probably heard his voice
from the very beginning of the station).
After debating, and after many doubts were expressed concerning the
Jordanian name for creative commons, there were no alternative solid
proposals to that. The name المشاع الإبداعي was also submitted to Al
Jazeera translators who find it coherent with the original english
idea and also meaningful in fus7ah.
I am telling you this story because since then, the community has been
growing so fast and not everybody in this list would be aware of this
meeting. Of course, there will never be something imposed by CC but,
after so many online and offline debates, we seemed to have reached an
agreement at least on the Arabic name.
We know that many people are not happy about that translation but I
think the goal of CC and of all of you in the region is much broader
than a name. I understand the remarks coming from somebody who says
that المشاع الإبداعيdoesnt mean anything in his/her own country or ,
worst, it has a negative nuance.
Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate the nuances of 22 Arab countries.
We should aim at unity, at least in the name, cause the goal is
broader than just the porting but to reach it we need not to create
confusion in the final user and not even in the institutions willing
to use CC.
*The name is a tool to convey a message* , if this message is not
clear yet in the name, mallesh (it is not even clear for Italians or
French people in the name only).
*The message of Creative Commons should be clear through our
activities above everything else*.
Our goal is to increase content creation in Arabic, to give it value
and recognition, to give tools to create more and better. And this
would be very difficult if each of us calls "CC 3ala keifi" (sorry for
the Syrian word, but I guess innu wasalat el fikra).
We will create confusion and discourage people to use it in the
future. Already too many names of CC exists -as Wikipedia underlines.
Thus, after serious consideration and long debates, CC-HQ has decided
it advisable to create as a policy that with respect to its Arabic
licenses, deeds and other official publications and translations, the
name for Creative Commons agreed upon in Doha be used and always with
(Creative Commons) in English in parenthesis immediately following the
name in Arabic. Hence:
لمشاع الإبداعي
(Creative Commons)
We realize that we cannot require unofficial publications in Arabic to
adhere to this, but *I would like to call each of you upon a common
effort and action which is to use in every place, every single piece
of content that you publish or release as well*. Only by adopting a
common action, by telling people that this is the name chosen through
discussions to designate CC, we will achieve a first little but
important goal which is to create unity at least on some points.
Please, do understand that this is not a Jordanian name: this is a
Panarab name and we are not favouring at all the Jordanians. The name
went through many discussions and, as I told you, was judged also by
Al Jazeera translators. It was the name which conveyed more consensus
so far, among legal experts and also community members.
If you have any questions about this, please let me know, I`ll be
happy to go into more details. Please, *use this name as a tool, not
as the final goal: cause the final goal is to grow the community in
content creation, art, education, music, movies, etc*.
For the same reasons, CC is similarly very concerned about different
jurisdictions using different names for the licenses.
Harmonization is a very important issue, at least to have some common
tools. So we will be asking the three existing jurisdiction teams –
the Egytpian, Tunisian and Jordanian teams – to work closely to
harmonize their licenses names if possible.
This doesn`t mean the Jordanian translation -only because it was the
first to be started and the first to be completed- should prevail.
But we strongly hope that if the Jordanian terms are seriously
unworkable in the other jurisdictions, at a minimum we should aim all
together at reducing the differences and try to keep the confusion
level in the end users as low as possible
We understand that this might seem an imposition for other
juridisdictions that are about to work on the porting. I also
understand that some of the words chosen for the licenses might not
have a legal meaning in different jurisdictions, according to
different copyrights laws and frameworks.
So we suggest, in order to balance the need of each jurisdiction to be
understood in the domestic legal framework and the need of encouraging
usability of the licenses at the Panarab end users level, that we`ll
try to find *a common solution*
Maybe here on this list?
It might be to unify the human deeds with same names, whereas when it
comes to legal deeds each differs according to local needs. It might
be something else, and we are very much open to suggestions coming
from your side about how to create a balance between the usability of
the licenses for end users and the respect for each different legal
tradition of each Arab country.
Could I please ask this lively community to post here ideas and
suggestions about how to solve this issue?
This is a very important issue and we have to find a "methodology" to
solve it. Your help is really appreciated and very much welcomed. But,
please, let's aim at a "methodogy", not at just posting comments and
opinions, we need suggestions cause we need a way to solve this issue
and balance those two above mentioned different needs.
As I said, we are much open towards a community discussion concerning
how to harmonize license names and human deeds.
At the same time, I would be very grateful to all of you if you would
start to use at least this common name لمشاع الإبداعي with the
english name in parenthesis (Creative Commons) in every official
situation, discussion etc.
I hope you understood the process who brought us to choose it after so
many discussions.
I`m sorry for the long email but I hope it was useful to clear some
doubts. We are very much looking forward to hearing your feedback on
this.
Shukran wa salamaat
dona
On Apr 25, 12:33 pm, Hala Essalmawi <[email protected]> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> My understanding of these very useful discussions is that there is a real
> need to finish the first Arabic Licenses. Then we can reach the final terms
> to be used. For the Egyptian License, we have been waiting for weeks now, for
> the feedback. For the Jordanian License, as far as I know, it has been
> pending for about 4 months now waiting for the final feedback from CC in SF.
> So let's hope that the project leads both in Eg. & Jo. receive the final
> feedback soon so we can proceed to the next steps.
>
> Greetings from Alexandria,Hala
>
> ________________________________
> From: Rami Olwan <[email protected]>
> To: Anas TAWILEH <[email protected]>; Hala Essalmawi
> <[email protected]>; Abdelmonam Kouka <[email protected]>;
> Houssem Aoudi <[email protected]>
> Cc: Rafik Dammak <[email protected]>; Mohamed ElGohary
> <[email protected]>; assel Safadi <[email protected]>; Anas Qtiesh
> <[email protected]>; [email protected]
> Sent: Sat, April 24, 2010 3:58:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [cc-arab-world] What's "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" in
> Arabic?
>
> Thanks Hala and Anas.
>
> Rami Olwan
>
> PhD Candidate, Australian government scholar (2008)
> ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
> Project Leader Creative Commons Jordan
> LL.M. Columbia University School of Law, New York, U.S.
> Phone: +61 731389591
> Fax: +61 731389395
> Mobile: +61 413743395
> E-mail: [email protected]
> Website:http://www.olwan.org/
> Address: Level 1, Margaret Street
> Brisbane QLD 4000
> Australia
>
> ________________________________
> From: Anas TAWILEH <[email protected]>
> To: Hala Essalmawi <[email protected]>; Abdelmonam Kouka
> <[email protected]>; Houssem Aoudi <[email protected]>
> Cc: Rami Olwan <[email protected]>; Rafik Dammak <[email protected]>;
> Mohamed ElGohary <[email protected]>; assel Safadi
> <[email protected]>; Anas Qtiesh <[email protected]>;
> [email protected]
> Sent: Sat, April 24, 2010 5:01:34 AM
> Subject: RE: [cc-arab-world] What's "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" in
> Arabic?
>
> Dear Abdelmomam,
>
> I second Hala’s comment. I came up with the first translation some time ago,
> but as we moved forward, I was convinced by the legal opinion of our friends
> Hala and Ziad and now I use the term: المشاع الإبداعي and advocate for its
> use.
>
> Salam,
> Anas
>
> From:Hala Essalmawi [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: 22 April 2010 17:32
> To: Abdelmonam Kouka; Houssem Aoudi
> Cc: Rami Olwan; Rafik Dammak; Mohamed ElGohary; assel Safadi; Anas Qtiesh;
> [email protected]; Anas Tawileh
> Subject: Re: [cc-arab-world] What's "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" in
> Arabic?
>
>
> Dear Abdelmonam and All,
>
> the website you kindly mentioned is the one of our IT friend Dr. Anas Tawileh
> from Syria. he took this intaitive to strat the Arab commons years ago. I
> cannot talk on behalf of Anas, however, I know that he agreed with the term
> المشاع الابداعي and he used it in his article (CC an intro for practitioners)
> he contributed with to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina A2K toolkit.
> Ar.:http://www.bibalex.org/a2k/attachments/references/reffilebga5fgjjclz2...
>
> En.:http://www.bibalex.org/a2k/attachments/references/reffileh150fxqxns2l...
>
> and in fact we are not 2 teams. we can all use same Arabic terms but with
> diffrent jurisdictions licenses according to our diffrent legislations. So,
> we, in Egypt use also the مشاع إبداعي & نسب المصنف
>
> greetings,
> Hala
>
> Hala Essalmawi
> Principal Attorney, LL.M (IP & Economics and Private Law)
> IPR Officer, (Head of Section)
> Legal Department
> The Library of Alexandria (Bibliotheca Alexandrina)
>
> Telephones : +2 03 4839999 Ext: 1153
> Direct 4820321
> Fax: 4820452
> Shatby 21526
> Alexandria, EGYPT
>
> e-mail:
> [email protected]/a2kwww.cultnat.org
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From:Abdelmonam Kouka <[email protected]>
> To: Houssem Aoudi <[email protected]>
> Cc: Rami Olwan <[email protected]>; Rafik Dammak <[email protected]>;
> Mohamed ElGohary <[email protected]>; assel Safadi
> <[email protected]>; Anas Qtiesh <[email protected]>;
> [email protected]
> Sent: Wed, April 21, 2010 3:06:56 PM
> Subject: Re: [cc-arab-world] What's "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" in
> Arabic?
>
> Salem all,
>
> I would like to mention that there is another work around Arabic CC with
> other translation completely different, here:http://www.arabcommons.org/so
> why not unify the two teams and get an only reference for this question?
>
> PS @ Houssem: sorry I think you don't know Tunisia, yes the simple user
> perhaps he don't care about copyrights but there many open source communities
> working to promote FOSS in Tunisia, there is ubuntu-tn, fedor-tn, DFSA,
> freeways, EspritLibre, CLLFST... and they are working hard, for example today
> there is an open source event in Ariana-Tunisia see
> here:http://www.opensource.tn/index.php?id=46&L=0&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=199&tx_ttnews[backPid]=19&cHash=0c56e100c4
> it was just an event and they are many, so please don't give a wrong idea
> about Tunisia.
> 2010/4/21 Houssem Aoudi <[email protected]>
> Good Morning,
>
> I think that translating it in arabic here in Tunisia will complicate the
> thing and can be anti-productive. No one here will understand the meaning of
> المشاع or الشياع, we can actually start talking about "Creative Commons" as
> it is to educate people about this philosophy.
>
> When i started my CC project on Tunivisions Magazine and Tunivisions.net
> webzine, i never asked my self about the technical word in arabic to use, i
> just choose the license wish is the nearest to our country legislature and
> the most understandable by Artists, collaborators and politician here. (the
> french version)
>
> The question of the intellectual property (Copyrights) and/or Creative
> Commons does not have any meaning now in my country... i just started the
> education with a pilot program to be ready when the fight for "the right to
> chose" will be on the table.
>
> Maybe im new with all of this, maybe im wrong, but discussing about
> "technical terms", for now, is not really important in my country, i prefer
> educating people and let them understand the "right to chose".
>
> best,
>
> Houssem AOUDI
> Mail : [email protected]
> Mobile : (+216) 20 201 201
> Skype id : aoudi.houssem
> Web : www.aoudi.net
>
>
> Le 21 avr. 2010 à 08:01, Rami Olwan a écrit :
>
> Rafk,
>
> Please let him respond here as this is the place to speak out. I don't want
> to go and ask him personally as there will be no use of having this list.
>
> I refer to the Jordanian list as it discuss some of the alternatives provided
> for translating Commons to Arabic. I think it is relevant to the discussion
> we are having here and could also stimulate further suggestions and comments.
>
> The IGF meeting was just a start up to discus CC Arab issues and every one
> was expressing his opinion of how the CC movement could move forward in the
> Arab world.
>
> I think choosing الشياع making things more complicated than المشاع. While
> some people could understand the meaning of المشاع not many would understand
> الشياع. I prefer not to make things more complicated. I also think there is
> no legal meaning in الشياع while المشاع is well known in property and land
> law. I am open to any other alternatives and suggestions. CC has the final
> word on that.
>
> Best,
>
> Rami Olwan
>
> PhD Candidate, Australian government scholar (2008)
> ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
> Project Leader Creative Commons Jordan
> LL.M. Columbia University School of Law, New York, U.S.
> Phone: +61 731389591
> Fax: +61 731389395
> Mobile: +61 413743395
> E-mail: [email protected]
> Website: http://www.olwan.org/
> Address: Level 1, Margaret Street
> Brisbane QLD 4000
> Australia
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Rafik Dammak <[email protected]>
> To: Rami Olwan <[email protected]>
> Cc: Mohamed ElGohary <[email protected]>; assel Safadi
> <[email protected]>; Anas Qtiesh
> <[email protected]>; [email protected]
> Sent: Tue, April 20, 2010 6:52:53 AM
> Subject: Re: [cc-arab-world] What's "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" in
> Arabic?
> Hi Rami,
>
> only Nafaa may reply to your inquiries, I just reminded what I already
> expressing during the open licensing workshop on IGF Egypt :) I cannot
> discuss about the CC meeting in Doha too as I was not there. well it is not
> competition between Arab countries but more we are blocked by the difference
> between legal regimes in Arab region. I understand that we may need common
> translation for Arab region, but standardization doesn't mean denying
> particularities of each country.
> I think that there is misunderstanding because I said "adapted to " and not
> "adopted".
> For word commons, it may be translated to term "الشياع", the term "المشاع"
> sounds odd and it may cause confusion. using the "commons" without
> translation is not suitable too.
>
> Yes, I know that Jordan license is the first one adopted, I don't see the
> relevance of such statement on out discussion?
>
> finally, what I expressed is only my understanding, I am not legal expert
> (and I am not going to be soon), you should ask Nafaa if you want
> more detailed answers .
>
>
> Regards
>
> Rafik
>
> 2010/4/20 Rami Olwan <[email protected]>
> No one proposed a better translation even Nafaa who promised do so in the CC
> Arab world meeting that was held in Doha last year, and he failed to do so
> until now. Al Jazeera senior Arabic translator was advised of ...
>
> read more »
--
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