從北大博士到普京：你抄我抄大家抄
As the Chinese common saying goes, “writing is borrowing, the only difference is whether you are skillful in doing that”. By coincidence, the great essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic T. S. Eliot once also said that “good writers borrow, great writers steal”. Are these words all wrong? Or do we get these words right?
中國有句俗語，“天下文章一大抄，看你會抄不會抄”。無獨有偶，偉大的作家、出版人、劇作家、文學家和社會評論家T.S.艾略特也曾說過，“優秀的作家借，偉大的作家偷”。這些話都是錯的？還是說，我們理解對了嗎？
August 27, 2014, China Daily posted a report named A Bold Move against Plagiarism, providing information on the Yu Yanru case. With the Doctor’s Degree in history from Peking University, Yu was accused by the Chinese Journal of Journalism and Communication of plagiarism in her thesis. January 10, 2015, Peking University announced that the accusation was true and it decided to revoke Yu’s doctorate and graduation degrees.
2014年8月27日，中國日報刊登了一篇題爲《反抄襲的大膽一步》的文章，介紹了於豔茹抄襲事件。於豔茹是北京大學歷史學博士，由於抄襲遭到《國際新聞界》雜誌控告。今年1月15日，北京大學宣佈稱，於豔茹確有嚴重抄襲行爲，決定撤銷其博士學位。
In fact, plagiarism was, is and will still be a shared problem in the world, academically and non-academically. Believe it or not, even famous politicians have done it.
事實上，抄襲一直以來、也將長期作爲一個世界性的問題，學術上、非學術上皆是如此。信不信由你，一些著名的政治人物也幹過抄襲這事兒。
Putin and his doctoral thesis
普京和博士論文
In 2000, Washington Post reporter David Hoffman asked the St. Petersburg State Mining Institute for a copy of Putin’s 218-page doctoral thesis but was refused. In 2005, two researchers at the Brookings Institution in Washington got a copy of the thesis and presented their findings in the year next. What they found was appalling – Putin’s thesis heavily “borrowed” the content from a textbook written by Professors David I. Cleland and William R. King from the University of Pittsburgh.
2000年，華盛頓郵報記者大衛·霍夫曼向聖彼得堡國立礦業學院申請獲取一份普京長達218頁的博士論文的複印件，但是被拒絕了。2005年，華盛頓布魯金斯學會的兩名研究人員拿到了普京論文的複印件，並於2006年發佈了他們的驚人發現——普京的論文大量“借用”了一本教科書中內容，該教科書是匹茲堡大學的大衛·克萊蘭教授和威廉·金教授撰寫的。
Although Putin did include the textbook in the bibliography, but no quotations marks anywhere could be found in his thesis.
雖然普京在文獻裏確實提到了這本書，但他在文中完全沒有任何有關引用的標明。
According to a 2014 report by the Science, the least “borrowing” problems can be found in German, America and Japan; while in Iran, Bulgaria and some other countries, such problems are severe.
根據美國《科學》雜誌一份2014年的報告，所謂的“借用”問題在德國、美國和日本等國最爲少見，而在伊朗、保加利亞等國則最爲嚴重。
I think Lee Ellis is correct about T. S. Eliot’s words -- I interpret “steal” to mean, in this context, the act of taking from other texts themes, ideas, rhythms, structures, but not the sentences themselves.
我想，李·埃利斯對於T.S.艾略特的話的理解是正確的——我認爲，所謂“偷”，指的是從其他文章的主旨、想法、節奏、結構中獲得靈感，而不是直接用別人寫的句子。
