Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-204.14.189.242-20190320235500/@comment-26239285-20190321031721

I'm not a lawyer but my understanding of copyright law in most countries is that every act of creation is automatically copyrighted. So to reprint a music video, you need to have either a licence or explicit permission. That applies to song lyrics too. I think (I'm not 100% sure though) the USA allows users of sites like this one to upload copies of song lyrics, but the copyright owners can demand the lyrics to be removed.

Translations are jointly copyright by the original lyricists and the translators. To my best understanding (NB as I said I'm not a legal expert), that means that if you want to make a copy of a translation, to be 100% legal you would need permission from both the lyricist and the translator (or copyright owner if the rights have been transferred).

So if you want to sub a video using someone's translation, then to do it legally, you need permission from both song producer and translator.

Getting permission can include a suitable license or statement that it's OK to use their work, e.g., AnnMeltsP says on her website, that it's OK to make a fansub subject to certain conditions, and I say on my website that it's OK to use my translations subject to certain conditions. So, so long as you agree to and meet both sets of conditions, you can use those translations to sub those songs.

If a translator does not state their intentions, then legally you would need to contact them to ask for and obtain permission. Apart from legalitiy, I would consider it the courteous thing to do.