Maya Ilieva is graduated Spanish philology. She translates from Spanish, English and French. She is director of the Association THEATREAUTOR, which talk about the problems and practices in the field of intellectual property and protection of translators and dramatists in our country.
The interview was taken by Elitsa Mateeva – correspondent of ipbulgaria.com
How do you explain the trend all theaters to govern their relations with the authors of dramaturgical texts by themselves, give up cooperation with THEATREAUTOR?
The problem is not only about means. First in January 2007, the activity of getting copyright is a subject to VAT 20%, which is the same for all products in the field of culture. When this activity is subject to these percentages remained in theaters disadvantage because an old and still existing cultural policy in Bulgaria, cultural institutions are exempt from VAT and the tickets are exempt from VAT too, something that contradicts the essence of the VAT Act, because this tax is generally paid by the last user, and this is the theater audience. Audiences buy tickets without VAT, which disadvantage in theaters, this prevents them to recover their money that paid for copyrights, they pay VAT and for consumables as heating, electricity, telephones … our position is to go into direction of elimination the VAT on copyright-worldwide have VAT, but to switch to VAT theater tickets and thus to recover funds for copyright.
THEATREAUTOR protect the rights of translators of dramaturgical texts. How does this relationship between you and the directors of the theaters, what are the rates for translation- are they strictly in norm in terms of the free market?
These stakes before10th of November in the old law are called charges. Today this highly norm rates does not exist, the market is the engine that defines them, but we have established practices in the protection of the individual authors. We have no problems with the rights of translators and it is essential in the preparation of a performance to say: the director who used a transfer, provided that it is possible the text to be translated by different translators.
Is comparable work of Bulgarian dramatists and value as interpreters of their work with colleagues across the borders of Bulgaria and what the relationships are at the beginning of creating the text?
I think it is not fair to make such parallels, since the conditions and standards of living are different. Certainly in the first staging every author should receive a lump sum following the premiere of a percentage of revenue of each show. I could not say that the authors prefer to defend their rights by themselves, but some are tempted by the directors of theaters where the directors were more convincing and the authors conclude a contract with the directors of the theaters and thus misses the activity of THEATREAUTOR. Even if an author has in the past 12 month’s revenue from production exceeding 50 thousand euro, the single must register for VAT. We have authors who complain of directors of theaters, pressed them to do not work with us. The author should decide by his own together with his colleagues on the item which will assert his rights. There are cases of extortion in which the heads of theaters say the author to sign a direct contract with the theater – otherwise he will not have this text. Some authors are not in good economic situation and in such cases they agree with such unethical conditions without any compliance. It should be considered more widely in order the state legislators to ensure that tickets are registered for VAT, the theaters for this activity also to be registered on VAT. So theaters would operate more freely and can deployed tranquil creative activity.
