CC 4.0 license translation team members meeting in Ouagadougou, CC France, CC BY

After more than two years of dedicated effort by an extraordinary group of CC francophone community members from more than 8 countries around the globe, we are delighted to publish the official translations of our 4.0 licenses in French. More than 220 million people around the world speak French as a primary or secondary language, and French is an official language in more than two dozen countries. This effort magnifies the reach and understanding of our licenses across all continents.

The French language translation involved two face-to-face meetings in 2016, the first in Paris and the second in Ouagadougou. Unique to this translation is that participants from both civil and common law legal traditions converged on a common translation of the six licenses. CC thanks the tireless efforts of translation leads Nicolas Jupillat of CC Canada, Daniele Bourcier of CC France, and Patrick Peiffer of CC Luxembourg. These three were supported in their efforts by many over the course of the translation work, including Esther Ngom from Cameroon and Prof. Tonssira Myriam Sanou from Burkina Faso, who co-organized the Ouagadougou meeting.

The translations and the face-to-face meetings would not have been possible without funding by Wikimedia Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.

Additional thanks for their valuable contributions goes to: Dr. Etienne Alla from Côte d’Ivoire, Simon Ayedoun from Benin, Florian Ducommun of CC Switzerland, Mawusee Komla Foli-Awli from Togo, Abdou Malam Garba from Niger, Moumouni Krissiamba Ouiminga and Philomène Medah from Burkina Faso, Primavera De Filippi and Batoul Betty Merhi of CC France, Christophe Traisnel, Anne-Laure Riotte, and Gwen Franck, former CC Regional Coordinator for Europe.

For details about the translation and additional contributors to the process, please see the notes posted to our wiki here. You can expect details about the public discussion process, language choices, and other decisions to be documented there in the coming months.