What is
Plagiarism?
Don't copy someone else's work;
write it yourself!
By Michael Krigline, MA (September 2008), translation by Nico
Chen --
www.krigline.com.cn
In China, as in English-speaking countries, there are laws
against plagiarism,
and the punishment for plagiarizing is severe.
To “plagiarize” means to use a passage, sentence, outline, or even a group
of phrases from the Internet, a book, or any other source, without telling
where you “borrowed” from. Plagiarism is a crime because it violates the
author’s intellectual property rights; many schools also seriously punish
plagiarism because it “hurts honest students” by giving the cheater an
unfair advantage over students who do not cheat. In America, university
students who plagiarize often lose the right to continue working toward a
college degree, and plagiarism brings great shame on the university, the
student, and the student’s family. In China, major universities have also
started to severely punish plagiarism. An article in the China Daily
(Dec 25, 2007) illustrated the cost of plagiarism by reporting on a Fudan
University post-graduate student who was expelled because his papers
contained work copied from others; furthermore, his tutor was asked to
resign from the post of deputy director of the school.[1]
In the real world(outside
university walls), plagiarism can cost you your job, and it could give
your company huge fines and a tarnishedreputation.
和使用英语语言的国家一样，在中国，法律上禁止剽窃，并且对于剽窃的惩罚很严重。剽窃的意思是：在没有注明出处的前提下从网上、书上或任何其它来源“借用”一段文字、一句话、一个提纲、甚至于几段话。剽窃是犯罪，因为它侵犯了作者的知识产权。因为它给剽窃者带来了的不公平的利益，伤害了那些没有剽窃的诚实的学生，在美国，剽窃的大学生常常会失去他们继续大学教育的权利，而剽窃也会给大学、学生本人和他的家庭带来耻辱。中国的几所主要大学也开始对剽窃行为进行严惩。中国日报2007年12月25日刊等一篇文章报道了一名复旦大学研究生因为论文内容有抄袭他人的成分而被开除，而且导师被要求辞去学校副主任的职位，这显示了剽窃要付出的代价。在现实世界中（高校象牙塔外），剽窃会使你失去工作，使你的公司受罚，名誉遭到玷污。
In spite of the severe consequences, plagiarism continues to
be a world-wide problem. Sometimes, English-learners use other’s thoughts
without documentationbecause they
don’t have a high enough English level to express themselves clearly, and
sometimes they simply don’t know that the practice is considered
dishonest. Furthermore, most teachers praise students whose writing
includes thoughts from great writers because it demonstrates a broad
understanding of literature. But this practice is acceptable only if these
quotations are enclosed in quotation marks with the original source
clearly shown.
尽管后果严重，剽窃仍旧是一个世界性的问题。有时候，学英语的人因为英语水平不够高不能清楚表达他们的想法或者是仅仅是因为不知道什么样的行为会被认为是不诚实的而在没有注明的情况下使用别人的成果，而且，大多数老师称赞那些作文中有伟大作家思路的学生，因为这些思路展示了对于文学的深刻理解。然而只有在这些引用被引号引起来并标明出处之后才能让人接受。
A
diligent teacher can often easily notice plagiarism. Signs include (1)
seeing a passage that is clearly beyond a student’s ability to write, (2)
seeing the same sentence in two or more essays, and (3) seeing a change in
grammar patterns or word use. When students are supposed to create
sentences with new vocabulary words, some plagiarize by copying sentences
from a dictionary. I sometimes recognize essays from one of the many
Chinese textbooks I’ve used. On more than one occasion, I have typed a
particularly advanced phrase into a search enginelike
www.google.com, only to find the student’s text almost word for word.
While it is sometimes OK to get ideas from on-line essays, your homework
should not look like you “borrowed” an outline and numerous clauses or
words that you don’t really understand. Using someone else’s sentence,
changed a bit with synonyms, is also plagiarism (unless you add
documentation).
勤奋的老师常常能很容易地发现剽窃行为。剽窃征象有：(1)文章的水平很明显超出了学生的写作能力，(2)在两篇或者更多的文章中看到相同的句子，(3)发现语法模式或是单词使用发生了变化。在学生用新单词造句的时候一些人抄袭字典上的例句。我有时会辨认出一些来自于我曾经使用过的一本汉语教科书的文章。不止一次，我把相当高级的词汇输入象www.google.com这样的搜索引擎，结果发现和学生的字字句句都相同的文章。虽然有时从网上获取思路是可以的，但是你的课后作业不应该看上去是你“借来的”提纲和大量你所并不理解的单词和句子。除非你注明出处，否则，只是稍加修改，同义词替换就使用别人的句子也是剽窃。
When one of my students plagiarizes, they get a zero on the essay’s draft,
another zero for the paper’s revision, and 30 points taken from their
final exam. Sometimes, I even tell them that they are not allowed to
return to my class. I want the punishment to be severe so that students
are not tempted to do this, no matter how much they have done it in the
past. Your teacher can not help you write better in English if you do not
turn in your own work, so plagiarizers are just slowing down their own
academic improvement.
如果我的学生剽窃，他的作文初稿将会被判零分，修改稿也将被判零分，并且期末考试将被扣掉30分。甚至有时候我会告诉他不允许他再来上课。我将严惩，以便让学生不会冒险去做，不管他们以前有过多少次。如果你不交作业，你的老师没办法帮你改善写作，因此剽窃将会减缓你作文能力的提高。
I can’t stress this enough: Plagiarism is unacceptable
behavior, especially when there is a much better alternative. Instead of
claiming that you wrote everything yourself, use a direct quotation
or paraphrase the original passage,
and be sure to include a footnote pointing to the source material. Then
the real author gets credit, and the reader has a source of additional
information. Acceptable paraphrasing requires more effort than changing a
word or two, but the result will be your work—and that is
something you can be proud of!
我反复强调：剽窃是一种不能让人接受的行为，尤其是在有更好的选择的时候。不用强调是你们自己动手写的，只要用一个直接引语或对原文释义一定要加上脚注，并指向资料源。原作者将会得到荣誉，读者也有一个获得更多信息的来源。能让人接受的释义要求付出比仅仅改变一两个词更多的努力，但是最终将是你自己的成果－是值得你骄傲的东西！
Discussion questions:
1. When you write in Chinese, how do you
include thoughts that come from others? Based on what you just read,
discuss differences between “western” and “Chinese” practices of using
things from come from other writers.
2. List reasons why English-learners
sometimes copy things from others when they write in English (either with
or without telling where it came from). What are some of the sources they
use?
3. What can happen to a student or business
person who plagiarizes? Can you tell us about something you read in the
news, or saw at your undergraduate college?
For an interesting article on plagiarism,
notably it's history and the idea that it is a "western concept," read
"A Different
Perspective on Plagiarism" by Dahlia Syahrani Md. Yusof,
Multimedia University (Cyberjaya, Malaysia)
Link:
http://iteslj.org/Articles/Yusof-Plagiarism.html
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© 2008 Michael Krigline, all
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