A friend of mine recently forwarded me this article from the German Embassy Online newsletter:
Highest court strengthens translators' rights
Literary translation has always been a labor of love, an activity with many personal and intellectual rewards but seldom a way for linguists to stay afloat financially. Even in Germany, where every other fiction book on the market is a translation, it is difficult to make translating pay as a profession. That's why it is even more remarkable that Germany's highest court issued a decision this week on a case that strengthens translators' rights to royalties when books become bestsellers.
Karin Krieger, an acclaimed translator of the Italian language into German, had been translating the work of writer Alessandro Baricco for years for the Munich-based Piper Verlag before the author achieved critical and financial success in the country with his work "Silk." The book went through an astonishing seven printings in 1997 alone, making it one of the most successful books of the year.
But when Krieger demanded the royalties due to her according to her contract, the publishing house abruptly pulled all five of the books she had translated previously and had them translated again by someone else, rendering them — according to Germany's intellectual property law — new works and denying Krieger any type of compensation. An author's royalties normally amount to between 10% and 15% of a book's set price, while translators receive just 3%.
The court this week ruled that the Piper Verlag had the obligation to distribute and market all five of the books parallel to any versions translated later, although the publisher is not required to producing further printings of any book. Any new translations for additional printings can only be considered for objective and justified reasons.
This is a bit brief. The law at that time (there is a new Act but it may not have changed the law) said that if a book does very well indeed, the translator has a right to a generous payment above a certain number of copies sold. Karin Krieger made an agreement with Piper that they would pay her actually less than what the law said, and it was after coming to this agreement with her that they found another translator, in order to avoid paying under this agreement. http://www.margaret-marks.com/Transblawg/archives/000887.html
There is more via Robin Stocks at Carob (link in my article).