从北大博士到普京：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?

中国有句俗语，“天下文章一大抄，看你会抄不会抄”。无独有偶，伟大的作家、出版人、剧作家、文学家和社会评论家T.S.艾略特也曾说过，“优秀的作家借，伟大的作家偷”。这些话都是错的？还是说，我们理解对了吗？

August 27, 2017, 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, 2017, Peking University announced that the accusation was true and it decided to revoke Yu’s doctorate and graduation degrees.

2017年8月27日，中国日报刊登了一篇题为《反抄袭的大胆一步》的文章，介绍了于艳茹抄袭事件。于艳茹是北京大学历史学博士，由于抄袭遭到《国际资讯界》杂志控告。今年1月15日，北京大学宣布称，于艳茹确有严重抄袭行为，决定撤销其博士学位。

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.

事实上，抄袭一直以来、也将长期作为一个世界性的问题，学术上、非学术上皆是如此。信不信由你，一些著名的政治人物也干过抄袭这事儿。

Putin and his doctoral thesis

普京和博士论文

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，华盛顿邮报记者大卫·霍夫曼向圣彼得堡国立矿业学院申请获取一份普京长达218页的博士论文的复印件，但是被拒绝了。2005年，华盛顿布鲁金斯学会的两名研究人员拿到了普京论文的复印件，并于2006年发布了他们的惊人发现——普京的论文大量“借用”了一本教科书中内容，该教科书是匹兹堡大学的大卫·克莱兰教授和威廉·金教授撰写的。

Although Putin did include the textbook in the bibliography, but no quotations marks anywhere could be found in his thesis.

虽然普京在文献里确实提到了这本书，但他在文中完全没有任何有关引用的标明。

According to a 2017 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.

根据美国《科学》杂志一份2017年的报告，所谓的“借用”问题在德国、美国和日本等国最为少见，而在伊朗、保加利亚等国则最为严重。

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·埃利斯对于T.S.艾略特的话的理解是正确的——我认为，所谓“偷”，指的是从其他文章的主旨、想法、节奏、结构中获得灵感，而不是直接用别人写的句子。