Vocational School of Justice
WATCH OUT FOR TRANSLATION PLAGIARISM!
The risk of “plagiarism” in the translation of literature classics draws attention. In a “Plagiarism in Translation Project” study carried out by IUE Department of Translation and Interpretation as a TUBITAK Project, all full text Turkish translations of the books Robinson Crusoe, Madam Bovary, and War and Peace have been examined. Only 2 out of 13 different translations of the novel Robinson Crusoe bore originality, and only 5 out of 38 different translations of the novel Madam Bovary bore originality. And many plagiarisms were detected in the novel War and Peace.
Asst. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Şahin, Lecturer at IUE Department of Translation and Interpretation, stated that translation was a self-sacrificing process, and they aimed to get books removed from the market which included plagiarism in order to protect the rights of translators. He said, “We aim to get books, which include plagiarism, removed from the markets, libraries, shelves, and homes. It is a two year TUBITAK Project. We are detecting plagiarism in back translation of classics. We have a team consisted of Translator Sabri Gürses, and Asst. Prof. Dr. Derya Duman and Damla Kaleş from Department of Translation and Interpretation. We are trying to bring a scientific approach to plagiarism in translation as IUE.”
’10 out of 13 Translations are plagiarized’
Şahin reported that they were researching about methods to prove plagiarism through experimental data, and stated the following about methods which would provide scientific proofs to allow translators to claim their rights:
“We examined Robinson Crusoe, Madam Bovary, and War and Peace. We scan these page by page and compare the different versions of translations. We are doing a qualitative and a quantitative research. We are using software to do that. We are comparing the similarities in different translations with a coding method in qualitative analysis. And in quantitative analysis, we gather statistical data by using electronic document comparisons. We are also doing an auxiliary text analysis. We gather experimental data regarding plagiarism by comparing the total data in three methods. We do it sentence by sentence. We use coding based on statements and original choices. We can also do macro comparisons without having to depend on a sentence or a word. We were appalled by the translations. Only 2 out of 13 different translations of the novel Robinson Crusoe bore originality, and only 5 out of 38 different translations of the novel Madam Bovary bore originality. And we detected many plagiarisms in the novel War and Peace.”
Asst. Prof. Dr. Şahin pointed that any kind of plagiarism was dangerous and that they wanted to protect the rights of the translators.