Lingua 5B Bosnia and Herzegovina Local time: 15:02 Member (2009) English to Croatian + ...
How much copying is allowed?
Mar 9, 2011
The answer is actually pretty simple.
Linguists measure common and frequent phrases that can be subject to coincidence; these structures are usually quite short ( short phrases or small sentences). The further the syntax expands the harder it becomes to copy by mere coincidence, so the larger the portion copied, the bigger the plagiarism. It's just how human brain works.
You will see it best if you give students the same topic for a paper and compare linguistic structures in their work( provided they did it in the class and couldn't use Internet or other source for copying third party material).
As illustration, one identical sentence or a phrase in a paragraph can be a coincidence, but never the entire paragraph ( this is actually impossible).
Therefore, the answer to this question is quite clear to experts.
[Edited at 2011-03-09 15:16 GMT]
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Natalia J Germany Local time: 15:02 German to Spanish + ...
Copying content on the Internet
Mar 9, 2011
Hello Rebecca and other translators,
you should also be aware that having identical content on the Internet is not good at all.
Actually, your (and/or the other one's) website could be categorised as "copy" by search engines and you would become a very bad position when clients are looking for a translator like you.
I don't know if you find this helpfully, but nowadays this is very important.
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You may use Copyscape to find where parts of your web site have been duplicated. Then add these copycats' URLs to your keywords, and add a page to your web site titled 'The real thing'. List links those sites there, explaining that they have used copies from yours. This might attract part of their traffic to you.
The point is that if something is good enough to be copied, it must be good indeed, so maybe web surfers might like to read more of 'the real thing'. Nobody would copy your complete content, as it is unlikely that they do/have done ALL you've done so far. Yet it's derogatory to some translator if they can't think of anything on their own to write, and feel forced to use your content.
My web site has plenty of useful material for fellow translators, clients, and even people who will never hire me, nor even contact me for anything. So I let anyone copy it, requesting that they mention the source. Most I could find so far did so. And some of my articles have been republished on the web, translated into languages I don't understand, a couple that I can't even read!
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Laurent KRAULAND France Local time: 15:02 Member (2007) French to German + ...
Anti-cheat software
Mar 9, 2011
Lingua 5B wrote:
(.../...)
As illustration, one identical sentence or a phrase in a paragraph can be a coincidence, but never the entire paragraph ( this is actually impossible).
Therefore, the answer to this question is quite clear to experts.
Said experts also created free anti-cheat software.
[Edited at 2011-03-09 17:40 GMT]
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Tony M France Local time: 15:02 Member French to English + ...
I too have suffered from this just recently
Mar 9, 2011
Another ProZ user has lifted a whole chunk of my profile lock, stock, and barrel — and not only used it on their ProZ profile, but also on their external website.
There's no possibility of coincidence here, it is flagrant... but the text involved is hardly that important.
However, what is much more important, in my view, is that this offender has also copied my client testimonials!!!! Now that strikes me as downright dishonest, and amounts of course to mis-representation and passing-off.
I await with great interest the outcome of the Support Ticket that I submitted as soon as I discovered the fraud.
Quite apart from the personal aspect, it also bears out certain other obvious lies in this person's profile.
I would urge ProZ to take strong action in such cases, since it calls into question the whole issue of professional integrity and could so easily cast a smear on ProZ.com itself.
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neilmac Spain Local time: 15:02 Member (2007) Spanish to English + ...
Humour verboten
Mar 10, 2011
It appears that my jokey post yesterday was removed, for no apparent reason. I would just like to reassure anyone who may have been misled or offended by my tongue-in-cheek claim that the details on my profile/CV were "made up" that this is not the case. It was merely intended as a humorous nod in agreement that there are a lot of phoney CVs and dodgy characters around out there.
I had assumed that reading between the lines was just another translator skill but apparently I was - yet again - mistaken. Mea culpa.
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The translation workplace 
