Are questions asking for translations allowed here? If not, where?

Question

I've got a movie called BC Rock, which was originally released in Belgium under the title "Le Chaînon Manquant". And no, it has nothing to do with the cartoon strip of the same name.

Anyway, after literally 20-something years of hunting it down, I finally found the original Belgian version. And there are scenes in that version that aren't in the US version. Additionally, I've heard the US version was re-written due to language concerns (the movie already has an R rating).

I'm dying to know what's being said, I've tried 2 "audio translators" and neither was even close, and I want to make an English subtitle for the Belgian version.

Can I ask here (well, not on Meta but the M&T Beta site) if anyone can do that for me? Is that type of question allowed? If not, does anyone know where I might be able to ask this?

Answer 1

As we haven't had a mod response on this, I'll throw in my thoughts on the matter. Please bear in mind I am not a lawyer and this is mostly based around research into fansubs.

I'm not a massive fan of the translation type questions we already have, but they seem to be well-ish recieved so who knows. I am however against translations of full movies/TV shows/episodes etc for a number of reasons:

1. Legality

   Fan made translations for copyrighted films are of questionable legality due to Article II of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (which is law basically everywhere) which states (emphasis mine):

   Subject to paragraph (3), if, after the expiration of a period of three years, or of any longer period determined by the national legislation of the said country, commencing on the date of the first publication of the work, a translation of such work has not been published in a language in general use in that country by the owner of the right of translation, or with his authorization, any national of such country may obtain a license to make a translation of the work in the said language and publish the translation in printed or analogous forms of reproduction.

   Basically this provision is saying that if a copyright holder hasn't translated work into your language within 3 years of its release, you can translate it if you have a license to do so.

   The text given doesn't name a specific authority to issue these licenses, other than they are Licenses grantable by competent authority, so it will vary by country and no doubt be a real hassle for an individual to obtain and StackExchange to verify.

2. Too broad

   As it says on the off-topic flag reason:

   There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.

   BC Rock is 95 minutes according to the IMDb link you gave. Picking a more famous film with that length at random, American Pie is also 95 minutes and the first English subtitles I found for it was a file with 107,090 characters over 6,766 lines. Aside from being well over the StackExchange character limit of 30,000, this is a massively unreasonable amount of text for anyone to write with no remuneration.

3. Locating or purchasing Movies or TV content / Link-only answers

   The only way to bypass the length limit would be to upload it elsewhere, and then the question comes under the "asking for external resources" close reason common to most other sites in the network. While it's not named as off-topic here, I think the rule against Locating or purchasing Movies or TV content is simply a more specific version of this rule and covers it in spirit, even if you argue not in word.

   The answers then being links will be off-topic due to the rules again link-only or low quality answers.