Translation Plagiarism: A Modern Day Concern

Mike Deep • June 20, 2014

Whether you are familiar with the term or not, translation plagiarism is a relatively new way that individuals are copying another’s written work. It involves taking written content and translating it to another language in hopes of reduced plagiarism detection. Translated plagiarism is based on the thought that some level of rewriting is involved when an article is put through an automatic system, which will lower the possibility of detection programs flagging it as plagiarized work.

Examples of Translation Plagiarism

If we sample how translated work would look like once put through an automatic system, the discrepancies are easily noticed with poor sentence structure and grammar.

Original Sentence: “The brisk October weather marked that football season was in full effect. Many fans grabbed their favorite team’s gear, headed to the game, and enjoyed a wonderful day of tailgating.

Automatic Translation Service Into Spanish: “El tiempo paso ligero de octubre marcó que la temporada de fútbol fue en pleno efecto. Muchos fans agarraron engranajes de su equipo favorito, se dirigió a la mesa y disfrutaron de un maravilloso día de chupar rueda.

Automatic Translation Service Back to English: “Weather brisk October marked the football season was in full effect. Many fans grabbed gear of their favorite team, went to the table and enjoyed a wonderful day of tailgating.

As you can see, the results fall short of what would be considered acceptable to any reader with some manipulation to the original meaning of the sentence.

Detection of Translation Plagiarism

Instant translation programs often result in poor sentence structure when converting from one language to the next. Plagiarism detection systems are cued into copied work containing matching phrases. These systems have shown minimal progress in the area of translated plagiarism so while an individual may bypass detection at the forefront, most articles will contain major issues with grammar, idioms, and other language-based sentence structure faults that result from translation programs.

Whether you are familiar with the term or not, translation plagiarism is a relatively new way that individuals are copying another’s written work. It involves taking written content and translating it to another language in hopes of reduced plagiarism detection.

Automatic translation systems that individuals use to conduct translated plagiarism work well enough to convey the necessary message but have difficulty with exact language matching. New translation detection systems have been introduced that combine a multitude of resources to find matches in work that may have been plagiarized.

As of now, there are no reliable methods for spotting translation plagiarism. However, solutions will surely emerge in the near future. Researchers at Plagramme are trying several new approaches, and great progress is being made. Don’t leave translation plagiarism in your assignments—it may become detectable at the very moment that you submit your paper.