CC-Khamoosh journal

Khamoosh:Creative Commons Report (2)

--- Part 2: Workshop (08.12.2023)

Below is a detailed documentation of the workshop on the "Collective Reading of Creative Commons License Translations in Persian and Kurdish," which was held by the Khamoosh community on 8 December 2023. This documentation serves as a virtual workshop and resource for the Persian and Kurdish speaking communities to use, study and review.

The 2-hour workshop is shortened and divided here into sections and includes English explanations for easier read. The language is Persian/Farsi with the last half an hour with English facilitation.

Please feel free to share this report widely, leave any feedback or comments here, and/or volunteer to peer-review our translations (in Persian/Farsi or Kurdish [Sorani]). Your contributions to this collective effort will be appreciated and credited on this webpage [update: February 2024].

Please refer to part one of this report to read the reflection on the process of translating Creative Commons [CC] licenses and their legal codes into Farsi/Persian and Kurdish (Sorani) by the Khamoosh community.


Workshop Invitation poster in Kurdish (Sorani)


Agenda

  1. Introduction (1':25'')
  2. Where is Creative Commons, and why? (3':05'')
  3. Keywords and CC layers  (3':47'')
  4. CC licenses (3':56'')
  5. Creative Commons and Khamoosh (3':29'')
  6. Legal notes and challenges (7':30'')
  7. Farsi/Persian linguistic notes and challenges (8':28'')
  8. Kurdish (Sorani) notes and challenges (5':48'')
  9. Invitation for a collective peer-reviewing (1':21'')
  10. Examples of CC licenses in the Khamoosh sound library (7':22'')
  11. Audience discussions (20':29'')
  12. Q&A with CC Counsel, Yuanxiao Xu (in English) (42':03'')


The slides are available in .pdf below, and you can then watch each section of the agenda separately.


1) Introduction (1':25'')

In this section, we provide a brief introduction that includes a helpful article about CC licenses and their history in Persian. The article was written by Elaheh Naseri and Maryam Sarrafzadeh. 



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2) Where is Creative Commons, and why? (3':05'')

We discuss the philosophy of shared knowledge as the main principle of CC and explain how we can contribute to reading and shaping legal frameworks for open access education. We also provide an example of how CC licenses allow users to use, modify, and redistribute materials. 


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3) Keywords and CC layers (3':47'')

In this section, we delve into five important keywords: 1) Public Domain, 2) Attribution, 3) No Derivatives, 4) NonCommercial, and 5) ShareAlike. 


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4) CC licenses (3':56'')

We thoroughly review each license and explain their meanings, using the keywords we learned in the previous section. Additionally, we offer a brief guide on choosing the best license.


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5) Creative Commons and Khamoosh (3':29'')

In this section, we explain the process of translations within the Khamoosh collective and discuss why and how the project began. We reflect on the working process and communication with Creative Commons.


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6) Legal notes and challenges (7':30'')

 We discuss the legal issues surrounding copyright in Iran, with a specific focus on its relation to the CC translation project. 1) There is limited literature available on copyright issues, 2) legal reinforcement around copyright issues is also limited and we rely on new laws in Iran regarding the protection of art ownership, and 3) we explore how CC licenses can assist Iranian users who are interested in publishing and distributing their work globally.


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7) Farsi/Persian linguistic notes and challenges (8':28'')

We discussed the relation between knowledge-making and language, emphasizing the crucial need for a dynamic conversation between CC licenses translations and the Farsi/Persian language. Instead of using direct translations using English words, we decided to think of Farsi/Persian terms in a contextualized manner that would allow for the expansion of literature in this field and its use in Persian. We also explored how the generative capacity of the language can contribute back to the CC community through translations into Farsi/Persian over a longer period of time when they are used and shared.

To facilitate collective peer-reviewing, we added a new column to the CC translations worksheet that serves as a guide. Each entry may have several suggestions or noted issues from both linguistic and legal perspectives. A list of all these terms is available for the peer-reviewers to use.

You can access this table here.


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8) Kurdish (Sorani) notes and challenges (5':48'')

In this section, we talk about the challenges within Kurdish translation with different strands of Kurdish languages and dialects spoken. There is no unified language spoken among all Kurdish speakers. The basis were the Kurdish speaking community in Iran, and the translation was done directly from English, with Farsi/Persian for some terms. Legal terms can be different in Kurdish in different Kurdish languages in different countries. 


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9) Invitation for a collective peer-reviewing (1':21'')

We invite the audience, including the readers of this report, to join this collective effort and we will acknowledge their support to be published alongside the translations on CC website. 

Also, as part of our community communication with CC, we applied for partly-funded scholarships for "CC Certificate for Open Culture/ GLAM", and in this section, with support from Khamoosh budget, we offered two fully-funded slots to the participants. 


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10) Examples of CC licenses in the Khamoosh sound library (7':22'')

We review each license and listen to examples from the Khamoosh sound library. 


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11) Audience discussions in Farsi (20':29'')



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12) Q&A with CC Counsel, Yuanxiao Xu in English (42':03'')



Khamoosh:Creative Commons Report (1)


--- Part 1: Translations Process (2022 - 2024)


 This is a detailed reflection on the process of translating Creative Commons [CC] licenses and their legal codes into Farsi/Persian and Kurdish (Sorani) by the Khamoosh community. 

This is the first part of our report that reflects on the process of translating the Creative Commons licenses and their legal codes into Persian and Kurdish. Please refer to the second part for the virtual workshop.

Please feel free to share this report widely, leave us any feedback or comments here, and/or request to volunteer for peer-reviewing our translations (either in Persian or Kurdish). Your contributions to this collective effort will be appreciated and credited on the Credits webpage [update: February 2024].

You can read more about the Khamoosh mission and work here. For our current work-in-progress and outputs review here. For support and contact visit here.

It is worth noting that Persian/Farsi and Kurdish are not the only representatives of languages spoken in Iran, and we do not wish to limit the linguistic diversity in Iran, which includes around 200 languages and dialects. Also, both Persian and Kurdish are spoken in at least 10 countries except Iran. Instead, we see this effort as a starting point for other collective works in various languages in/beyond Iran.

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Backstory

In Fall 2022, we built a form for submissions and entries for Khamoosh sound library, including a section explaining the different ways of access for users, partly incorporating CC licenses for works that allow sharing. We discovered that most users, including members of Khamoosh, were not familiar with Creative Commons licenses, and that the English explanations were not sufficient.


Screenshot of the Submissions Form of Khamoosh sound library


We also found that Creative Commons had preliminary Persian/Farsi webpages, but their translations were not comprehensive. Consequently, we decided to provide solid translations for each license in Persian.

 In December 2022, Niloufar Lari, one of the members of Khamoosh who is also responsible for research and translation as part of her role in organizing resources for the Khamoosh community, started translating the “About CC Licenses” webpage, and providing a brief description of each license in Persian.


 Draft of the translation of CC ethos and licenses into Persian (Dec. 2022)


This work was initiated voluntarily with the editorial support of Khorshid Parsi and the assistance of Pantea Armanfar in facilitating community efforts. We reached out to Creative Commons to seek guidance on translating the licenses and discovered that the legal codes are the most crucial part of the translation, none of which had been previously translated into Persian. "When the legal codes are translated, users (as well as your court system and government) can rely on your translation instead of having to refer to the English version," advised Yuanxiao Xu, Counsel at Creative Commons. She also supported us throughout this project and at the time, connected us with the Copyright Platform for meeting and collaborating with like-minded legal experts in other parts of the world, and introduced us to their support for community projects.


 Yuanxiao Xu offering us support and resources


Community Fund Support from CC Copyright Platform

Later in March 2023, we applied for a community fund from the CC Copyright Platform to be able to continue this work with a budget of $2800. This grant enabled us to form a team to translate the licenses into Persian and Sorani Kurdish, as well as create engagements around these translations by designing and conducting a workshop and creating visual materials by our Graphic Designer Kimiya Moradi.

Soon after, our team was formed and we began translating the legal codes into Persian using the Creative Commons 4.0 Translation Worksheet and Legal tools translation guide, which proved to be very helpful and time-saving. However, the process was more challenging and slower than we anticipated. Many terms had no direct translation into Persian, and we realized that we needed to suggest words that aligned with the legal language to be used in the court system in Iran while still being accessible to the reader. This required the expertise of various consultants to offer us guidance and feedback. At this stage, M.Ali Aghabozorgi Naeimi, Attorney at Law and Legal Consultant who offered us initial consultancy in the translations process became an active member of the translations group. 

During this process, we also needed to find a Kurdish translator, which proved to be difficult due to the limited platform and cultural space for supporting Kurdish literature. It took us longer than expected, but eventually Erfan Karami joined our group through an open call. He formed an editorial team along with Ariyan Qaderyan and Nyan Foad Ahmad Barzanji.

Open call for Kurdish (Sorani) Translations of Creative Commons licenses and their legal codes


Workshop Preparations


By September 2023, we had completed both translation projects and were preparing a workshop to introduce the translation process and its challenges. We also invited a collective peer-reviewing of the legal codes. 

Khorshid wrote a proposal of the translations process which translation can be read here, and also initiated a collaboration with the Iranian Editorial Society.

As part of our community communication with CC, we applied for partly-funded scholarships for "CC Certificate for Open Culture/ GLAM", and later in our workshop, with support from Khamoosh budget, we offered two fully-funded slots to the participants. 

With each team member located in different cities or villages across Iran, as well as some of us in diaspora living in different continents, communication and remote collaboration became a challenge that we had to overcome. Fatemeh Saedi and Parisa Mirsadeghi, Communication Advisor and Coordinators in Khamoosh, helped this aspect alongside Khorshid and Pantea. As of now in the time of writing this report, we have exchanged +1520 messages on Khamoosh community discord server, and +40 online meetings and collective readings of the translations.

Screenshot of Creative Commons channel on Khamoosh discord server


Conclusion and Next Steps

The workshop was held on December 8, 2023, with detailed documentation provided in part 2 of this report, which can be read, watched, and studied. 

As part of our workshop preparation, we interviewed experts who offered responses to the specific questions arised in the translations process. For the workshop, we decided to stay focused on what, how, and why of CC licenses, introduce our translations project, and invite public engagement for collective peer-reviewing of the translations.

We have also concluded that hosting further workshops or engagements, such as podcasts featuring interviews or debates, could be potentially the next steps in advancing our work so far.

At present, both groups are undergoing peer-review and editorial support from various stakeholders. The finalization is expected to take place in Winter 2024, after which the materials will be submitted to Creative Commons for a broader assessment and review before being published on their website.



A proposal for Khamoosh:CC translations into Persian/Farsi and Kurdish Sorani

This proposal is originally written by Khorshid Parsi in Persian/Farsi. This translation is not final and is published for the purpose of documentation and process sharing. 

Refer to the report on Khamoosh:CC translations process in two parts.



A proposal for Khamoosh:CC translations into Farsi and Kurdish by the Khamoosh Collective

Khamoosh is a participatory and transdisciplinary approach in search of Iran's intangible heritage of sounds. One of the most significant outputs of this research is a comprehensive sonic library, which provides a system for recording, classifying, searching, and accessing these sounds. The need for a legal framework for sharing and publishing the archive led to a collaboration between Khamoosh and Creative Commons, aimed at translating Creative Commons licenses into Farsi and reevaluating them from the perspective of cultural users in Iran.



Creative Commons (CC) is a nonprofit organization active internationally devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. CC provides legal and free copyright licenses for creators to make their work available to users. These licenses define the types of use and redistribution of works within legal frameworks and offer solutions to support reproduction/publication rights. Many reputable institutions worldwide and online platforms such as Wikipedia, YouTube, and Archive.org, among others, use these licenses. It seems that the use of Creative Commons licenses is also expanding in Iran, with institutions and groups now sharing their works under the coverage of these laws. Therefore, it is an appropriate time to organize, expand, and lay the foundations of this branch of legal literature in Iran before it becomes a chaotic collection of unused and unenforceable materials, with terminology beyond the reach of the Farsi language's generative capacity. It is worth mentioning that Creative Commons also has a Farsi section on its website, but it is incomplete and has numerous language errors. Therefore, we have decided to create another translation under the supervision of the Iranian Editorial Society, which will be accessible, and accurate, providing the opportunity for the expansion of literature in this field and its use in Iran.



The literature of copyright and distribution, both works governed by specific institutions and works that are accessible to the public, is limited in Persian and other languages within the cultural sphere of Iran and has had less growth. Accordingly, cooperation between Khamoosh and Creative Commons is defined in three stages. The first stage is the preparation of the Persian version. The secondary goal of this stage is to establish a basic Persian version for translating these legal materials into other languages within the cultural sphere of Iran and expanding the literature of reproduction rights with the help and collaboration of these languages alongside Farsi/Persian. Therefore, the second stage of cooperation is the translation into another language based on the Persian version, for which the Kurdish Sorani language was chosen as the first example. The third stage involves holding meetings and workshops to test the effectiveness of the resulting versions. The goal of these workshops is, first and foremost, to introduce the licenses and how to use them in both Persian and Kurdish. Then, by gathering the legal, artistic, academic, and other communities involved in reproduction rights and the fair and legal sharing and exploitation of created works, we intend to address the needs, problems, and proposed solutions through collaboration and critique and establish an efficient version of this set of laws for Iranian users.




Credits for Khamoosh:CC translations project

  Farsi/Persian Translation:


Khorshid Parsi, Architect, Heritage conservator, Farsi Language Researcher & Editor, Community co-founder

Niloufar Lari, Lecturer, Independent Researcher, and PhD candidate in “Islamic Art Studies”, Tehran University of Art. co-founder of “Ghubar: Islamic Art Studies”

M.Ali Aghabozorgi Naeimi, Attorney at Law and Legal Consultant, M.A Oil and Gas Law at the University of Tehran

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Kurdish (Sorani) Translation:


Erfan Karami, Independent Researcher, Translator, Writer, B.A Student of Kurdish Language and literature in “University of Kurdistan”, Iran

Ariyan Qaderyan, Editor, undergraduate student of psychology, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj branch.

Nyan Foad Ahmad Barzanji, Independent researcher, Kurdish language and literature expert at UOK - IRAN, master's student in linguistics at UOK - IRAN.

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Communication:


Pantea Armanfar, Artist and Researcher, Community co-founder & Facilitator 

Kimiya Moradi, Graphic Designer

Fatemeh Saedi, Communication Advisor and Coordinator, Social Media Manager

Parisa Mirsadeghi, Architect and Urban Designer, Communication Advisor and Coordinator

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Peer-Review and Research:


Ramin Mahmoudi, Art Critic and Educator, Editor

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