Unofficial Translations
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Unofficial Translations
Information about unofficial
translations
The FSF does not approve license translations as officially valid.
The reason is that checking them would be difficult and expensive
(needing the help of bilingual lawyers in other countries). Even
worse, if an error did slip through, the results could be disastrous
for the whole free software community. As long as the translations
are unofficial, they can't do any legal harm.
To underscore the fact that these translations are not officially
valid, we do not publish translations. To help make that clear, we don't
post them on gnu.org, or on other GNU and FSF web sites; we only link
to them.
The purpose of linking to translations is to help more people
understand our licenses. In order for them to do that, translations
need to be basically accurate even if not perfect. To produce a good
translation, it is essential to have fully understood fundamental
concepts such as
copyleft
and
the
free software definition
For this reason, those who wish to contribute translations should make
sure they are well acquainted with these concepts as well as other
philosophical principles that may appear in the document.
We give permission to publish translations of GNU licenses
into other languages, provided that:
You label your translation as unofficial to inform people that
they do not count legally as substitutes for the authentic version
(see below for how to do this).
You agree to install changes at our request, if we learn from other
friends of GNU that changes are necessary to make the translation
clearer.
The translation is not hosted on a commercial site and does not
refer to any company.
The page containing the translation should have no links
except to fsf.org and gnu.org. We might accept links about
other free software packages, but we prefer to avoid them.
You permit others to copy, modify, and republish your translation (and
modified versions of your translation) subject to these terms by placing
the following notice: “You may publish this translation, modified or
unmodified, only under the terms at
.”
We may accept small exceptions to these rules in
legacy cases that are hard to fix.
We do not necessarily link to all the unofficial translations that
we know of in any given language. For instance, if one unofficial
translation was made by a free software organization that we know and
have confidence in, we will link to that translation rather than others.
We still can't make it official, but we expect it is probably mostly
correct.
To label your translations as unofficial, please add the
following text at the beginning,
both in English and in the language of the translation. Replace
language
” with the name of that language, and “GNU
General Public License” and “GPL” with the name and
abbreviation of the license you're translating, if it's not the
GPL:
This is an unofficial translation of the GNU General Public License
into
language
. It was not published by the Free Software
Foundation, and does not legally state the distribution terms for
software that uses the GNU GPL—only the original English text of
the GNU GPL does that. However, we hope that this translation will
help
language
speakers understand the GNU GPL better.
If you make a translation (of any license), please inform the GNU
Translation Managers

They will check to make sure that your translation follows the above
guidelines and make a link to it from this page.
The GNU General Public License, version 3
[ar]
Arabic
translation of the GPL (PDF)
[cs]
Czech
translation of the GPL
[da]
Danish
translation of the GPL (TXT)
[de]
German
translation of the GPL
[el]
Greek
translation of the GPL
[eu]
Basque translation of the GPL
HTML
TXT
PDF
ODT
[gl]
Galician
translation of the GPL (TXT)
[ja]
Japanese translation of the GPL
HTML
Markdown
[it]
Italian translation of the GPL
HTML
PS
PDF
LaTeX
[lt]
Lithuanian
translation of the GPL
[nl]
Dutch
translation of the GPL (PDF)
[pt-br]
Brazilian Portuguese translation of the GPL
HTML
Markdown
PDF
ODT
[ro]
Romanian translation of the GPL
HTML
TXT
PDF
ODT
[ru]
Russian
translation
of the GPL (PDF)
[sk]
Slovak
translation of the GPL
[zh-cn]
Chinese (Simplified)
translation of the GPL
[zh-tw]
Chinese (Traditional)
translation of the GPL
The GNU Affero General Public License, version 3
[ar]
Arabic
translation of the AGPL (PDF)
[el]
Greek
translation of the AGPL
[ja]
Japanese translation of the AGPL
HTML
Markdown
[lt]
Lithuanian
translation of the AGPL
[pt-br]
Brazilian Portuguese translation of the AGPL
HTML
Markdown
PDF
ODT
[ru]
Russian
translation
of the AGPL (PDF)
[zh-cn]
Chinese (Simplified)
translation of the AGPL
[zh-tw]
Chinese (Traditional)
translation of the AGPL
The GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3
[de]
German
translation of the LGPL
[el]
Greek
translation of the LGPL
[eu]
Basque translation of the LGPL
HTML
TXT
PDF
ODT
[lt]
Lithuanian
translation of the LGPL
[pt-br]
Brazilian Portuguese translation of the LGPL
HTML
Markdown
PDF
ODT
[ru]
Russian
translation
of the LGPL (PDF)
[zh-cn]
Chinese (Simplified)
translation of the LGPL
[zh-tw]
Chinese (Traditional)
translation of the LGPL
We hope someone will write new unofficial translations in Czech and
Slovak. Some were made, but the translator used them to advertise a
commercial site, so we are not willing to link to them.
The GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.3
FDL 1.3 was released on November 3, 2008, and is a relatively minor
modification of FDL 1.2; the only major changes are the revision of
section 9 and the addition of section 11. Thus,
the
translations of FDL 1.2
may help you understand FDL 1.3 as well.
You can learn more about the differences between these two versions
in
our FAQ
[el]
Greek
translation of the GFDL
[fr]
French
translation of the GFDL
[lt]
Lithuanian
translation of the GFDL
[pt-br]
Brazilian Portuguese translation of the GFDL
HTML
Markdown
PDF
ODT
[ro]
Romanian translation of the GFDL
HTML
TXT
PDF
ODT
[ru]
Russian
translation
of the GFDL (PDF)
[zh-cn]
Chinese (Simplified)
translation of the GFDL
[zh-tw]
Chinese (Traditional)
translation of the GFDL
We hope someone will write new unofficial translations in Czech and
Slovak. Some were made, but the translator used them to advertise a
commercial site, so we are not willing to link to them.
Translations Underway
The following translation efforts are underway, please contact the
person/team if you are willing to help.
[id]
Indonesian,

Unofficial translations of exceptions to GNU
licenses
GCC Runtime Library Exception, version 3.1
[el]
Greek
translation of the GCC RLE
[pt-br]
Brazilian Portuguese translation of the GCC RLE
HTML
Markdown
PDF
ODT
[zh-cn]
Chinese (Simplified) translation of the GCC RLE
Markdown
PDF
GCC RLE 3.1 was released on March 31, 2009, and is a relatively minor
modification of GCC RLE 3.0. Thus, the
translations
of GCC RLE 3.0
may help you understand version 3.1 as well.
We hope someone will write new unofficial translations in Czech and
Slovak. Some were made, but the translator used them to advertise a
commercial site, so we are not willing to link to them.
GNU Autoconf Configure Script Exception, version 3
[el]
Greek
translation of GNU Autoconf Configure Script Exception
[pt-br]
Brazilian Portuguese translation of GNU Autoconf Configure Script Exception
HTML
Markdown
PDF
ODT
We hope someone will write new unofficial translations in Czech and
Slovak. Some were made, but the translator used them to advertise a
commercial site, so we are not willing to link to them.
Set language
Available for this page:
[en]
[ca]
català
[de]
[es]
[fr]
[ja]
[pl]
polski
[pt-br]
português
[ru]
русский
[tr]
Türkçe
[zh-cn]
简体中文
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Please see the
Translations
README
for information on coordinating and contributing translations
of this article.
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