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Laws of LT

First rule

  • Filthy, offensive, and obscene language and images are prohibited on the site, including usernames and profile pictures.That also extends to offending people based on their nationality, sexual orientation, skin color, religious beliefs, political views, etc. This is a multicultural and multinational website, so respect comes always in first place. Vulgar language is only allowed within lyrics (and subsequent translations) - which must be marked as explicit. Comments and other types of content with insults and/or provocation on the grounds mentioned before that have no context will be unpublished and their author will be warned.

Adding content

  • Lyrics should preferably be input in accordance with these guidelines. Translations have to follow that layout while also keeping in mind grammar rules of the target language.
  • Lyrics that contain serious hate messages, violence propaganda, racism and aggressive discrimination are prohibited.
  • Avoid typos and wrong information.
  • Don't use capslock if you haven't got a good reason to do so. Don't capitalize every letter in a song or a translation, the same goes for the title unless the title itself is originally in all caps or is an acronym.
  • Do not add incomplete lyrics. If the lyrics of a song are in more than one language (one of which you don't know), please request a transcription adding the part you know in the comments, or ask for help in the forums.
  • Don't add transliterations as lyrics. If you have the transliteration but no lyrics add a transcription request and add the transliteration in with the request. Or if a song is in more than one language (ex: French) add the French parts with the request (if you have it, if not leave a note) and submit the transcription request.
  • Instrumentals or music without lyrics shouldn't be posted on LT, only songs with lyrics (even one line) should be published.
  • Only song lyrics and poetry can be posted as artistic content. Content with only symbols, emojis, numbers, special characters or written in morse/binary code are not appropriate content and shouldn't be added. Titles, prose texts, quotations and aphorisms are also types of content that should not be added. All other types of content are allowed to be discussed within the forum. Content that falls out of these categories that was not asked in the forums will be unpublished as soon as spotted by a staff member.
  • You can use these HTML-tags to format the lyrics, translations and comments you add.
  • Remove URLs from within the lyrics.
  • Remove original lyrics from within the translation.
  • If you don't know the artist, write "Unknown Artist (x)", with x being the language.
  • If you don't know the lyrics, make a transcription request.
  • Write only one artist into the field "artist". There are fields for featuring artists. Please put only one artist into each field. If a song has been covered or performed by another artist using the same lyrics, you can put that other artist into the field "Also performed by".
  • Religious texts/prayers belong into "Worship Songs", especially if the author is unknown.
  • Traditionals with unknown author belong into "X Folk", with X being the language.
  • National anthems belong into "National Anthems & Patriotic Songs".
  • Lyrics should preferably be written in the writing script of the original language (Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Kanji, Devanagari etc.).
  • Artists should be written in Latin letters. The field "original name" on an artist's page refers to the spelling in the artist's country. If it's the same as what is written into the field "artist", just leave "original name" empty. Don't write the members of a band into that field.
  • Alternative titles should be added in square brackets, like "Original title [Alternative title]".
  • Best write into the submitter's comment from where you have taken the lyrics (especially if it's an official source like the artist's homepage or the booklet).
  • Please provide proper divisions of lyrics into stanzas whenever possible. Unless lyrics are taken from the booklet, take the three criteria in consideration: Lines must not be written with spaces between them without a reason, choruses / refrains must be separated from other parts of the song and, finally, when there is a longer break between lyrics, the two lines must be separated.
  • Extra-short lyrics are allowed only if they were officially released.
  • LT doesn't allow content that poses a serious risk of egregious harm by spreading medical misinformation about currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Adding a translation

  • Don't plagiarize. If you would like to suggest corrections to an existing translation, please write them in the comments or send a PM to the author.
  • If you add a translation you haven't done yourself, or if your translation is based on another translation, give a source.
  • If you add translations you haven't done yourself, you should make sure they are not completely awful. Please be advised that very bad quality source translations would be removed - and their author risks to be warned if they continue to submit such. For that reason, it's better to add only translations into languages you know.
  • Only translate into languages that you are no complete beginner of.
  • Don't add machine translations. If any translations similar to Google Translate are found, they will be unpublished and you will be warned if you keep publishing translations of such quality. Machine-made transliterations are also not allowed.
  • No duplicates.
  • No incomplete translations.
  • Please translate the song title as well as the song lyrics, whenever it is possible.
  • Please write with the original alphabet of the language you translate into.
  • If a specific performer goes with neutral pronouns and uses neutral language in their songs, when translating them, the choice of how to convey that into target language falls on translators. They are free to choose the way that best suits target language structure, keeping in mind that translation still must make sense nonetheless. In case target language has no gender-neutral forms, and translator wants to use gender-neutral language anyway, it's fine, but translator is advised to mention their choice of words/structures in either footnote or 'Submitter's comments'. For lyrics, in case submitter knows about that, it's recommended for a small comment to be added to 'Submitter's comment' explaining that as well, serving as a heads-up for translators.
  • As translations can be a mean for one to know and understand a new language, it's better if you keep at least a colloquial language that's easy for the general public to understand - and you may use footnotes to add general explanations and comments in certain parts of the translation if so you wish. You're also free to keep an informal tone in certain contexts, specially if the lyrics require such a thing. Translators are allowed to use cuss/vulgar words in their translations in case the base lyrics have them - but they're free not to if so they choose.

Editing content

  • If you want to edit your translation, a song or a comment you added, click on "edit".
  • Correction of an original lyric performed by an editor or a moderator may not be reversed by a user who is not an editor or moderator.
  • Requests to edit lyrics should be for the following reasons: lyrics belong to another song, spelling mistakes, orthography mistakes, punctuation, missing lines/stanzas, removal of lines/stanzas that aren't sung in the song, removal of links/ads within lyrics, removal of anything that isn't the lyrics (ex: transliteration, translations, emojis, etc.). Lyrics will not be edited for aesthetic reasons (reformatting without a good reason). Unless the song needs to be reformatted (not divided properly), those requests will be disregarded.

Copying translations

  • Don't steal people's translations to post them in other websites - please contact the submitter to ask whether they mind their work to be published elsewhere.

Rating translations

  • Only rate translations if you know both the source language and target language.

Completing requests

  • If you have transcribed lyrics that were requested but several parts are missing, it's better to write your transcription in a comment beneath the request.
  • Look if there are comments beneath a request before adding your translation/transcription.

Idioms

  • "Idioms" is for phrases that have figurative meaning, and not for normal random sentences.
  • Each idiom should be added separately. If two idioms look similar and have the same meaning, they should be added as equivalents.

Forums

  • Avoid requesting a song translation in the Forum, it only should be done just in case your request is taking too long.

Comments

  • Please keep the good tone and be respectful towards the others in the comments and the forum. If you do not agree with a song's lyrics, please contact the singer/band directly, as LyricsTranslate has nothing to do with the content in the songs. Any provocative comments will be deleted and the users - warned.
  • Comments are always welcome, however, please try to avoid off-topic comments in translations/song/artist pages. In case you want to discuss something that is not related to the content of a song/translation, you can use the sub-forums. Do not bring politics or other irrelevant stuff to the website, unless it's contextualized. Off-the-rails comment sections will be closed, and frequent violators banned.

Do you have another question?

Translations of the FAQ and the Website Rules pages into some other languages are available in other interfaces. If you want to check if they're available in your language, please use the 'Select your language' button atop each page of LyricsTranslate and select your language. If this content isn't available, the default English text will show up. If you want to help and provide a translation to these pages, contact an Administrator and show your interest.
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