Unofficial Translations

Information about unofficial translations

The reason the FSF does not approve these translations as officially valid 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 harm, and we hope they help more people understand the GPL.

We give permission to publish translations of the GPL, GFDL, or LGPL into other languages, provided that you (1) label your translations as unofficial (see below for how to do this), to inform people that they do not count legally as substitutes for the authentic version, and (2) 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.

To label your translations as unofficial we want you to add the following text at the beginning, both in English and in the language of the translation---replacing language with the name of that language:

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, please inform the GNU Webmasters <webmasters@gnu.org>. They will check to make sure that your translation follows the above guidelines and make a link to it from this page.