Interface News Reporter | Intern Reporter Huang Dongjie Reporter Yin Qinglu
Interface News Editor | Jiang Yan
html On January 23, the publishing organization Jiujiu Scholars (referred to as "99 Scholars") published a rights protection statement on the Douban account of the "Paris Review Editorial Department" it operates. The statement stated that Shanghai Translation Publishing House may have plagiarized the book "The Donner Brothers and Sisters" and requested that "if it constitutes plagiarism, please publicly apologize; if it is actually used as a reference, please publicly acknowledge it." An hour later, Shanghai Translation Publishing House issued a statement on its Douban account, stating that it would immediately stop selling the book, but did not comment on whether its translation had been plagiarized or borrowed from."The Donner Brothers" is the first novel of Swiss writer Robert Walser and the prelude to his autobiographical trilogy of Berlin novels. The other two parts are "The Assistant" and "Jacob von Gunten". . Shanghai Translation Publishing House published the book "The Tangner Brothers and Sisters" in August 2023, calling it the "first Chinese translation" in the promotional copy, and the translator was Ci Xiaofang. 99 Readers stated in a statement that new translations of Robert Walser's trilogy will be released after the Spring Festival this year, among which "The Donner Brothers and Sisters" will be responsible for the young translator Ye Hui.
Douban rating of "The Donner Brothers and Sisters", Shanghai Translation Publishing House, August 2023 edition (screenshot from Douban)
This article is called "Is it borrowing or plagiarism?" 99 Readers’ Rights Statement on the Translation of "The Tangner Brothers and Sisters" mentioned that Ye Hui read the Shanghai translation version of "The Tangner Brothers and Sisters" on the evening of the 16th and found that the translated text of the first chapter was the same as what he had read in November 2018. The trial translation of "The Donner Brothers" published on its Douban homepage on the 14th has highly similar or even completely identical parts. 99 Readers stated in a rights protection statement that Ye Hui and the publisher of 99 Readers compared the two translations and believed that the first chapter of the translation agency's "The Tangner Brothers and Sisters" was suspected of plagiarizing Ye Hui's trial translation of the year, which is also the upcoming book of the same name by 99 Readers. The first chapter of the book. In the statement of
99 reader, the two versions of the translation were compared. Interface Culture saw that there were some identical sentences, such as, "For me, this kind of reason is as essential as a loving heart." Long sentences. In the longest translation of about 300 words, the difference between the two versions is about 40 words. In some passages, the difference is only reflected in "please" and "request", "afternoon" and "afternoon", "quick response" and "quick response", "ignore" and "forget about" and other individual words.
99 Reader Rights Protection Statement Attached to the Comparison Results (Part)
The statement also mentioned that two days after Ye Hui raised the question, Ci Xiaofang told the editor of 99 Reader through the editor-in-chief of the translation agency that she did indeed express doubts about Ye Hui during translation. The trial translation published on Douban was used as a reference, but it was not believed to be plagiarism. Ci Xiaofang also expressed the hope of private communication with Ye Hui. However, Ye Hui and 99 Scholars said they would only accept a public apology. In the statement,
99 Reader believes that the part suspected of plagiarism by the translation agency is limited to the first chapter, and there is no need to remove it from the shelves as the only way to deal with it. However, his request for a public apology or a thank you to the translator of 99 Reader Edition has not been responded to.
Currently, the book "The Donner Brothers and Sisters" cannot be searched on the official website of Shanghai Translation Publishing House (screenshot from the official website of Shanghai Translation Publishing House)
How to define plagiarism and reference in translation is a long-standing topic. Interface Culture once wrote an article reporting on "The British Museum Exhibition" "The whole story of the plagiarism of Chinese translators' translations". The British Museum introduced the life and poems of the Chinese revolutionary Qiu Jin in the special exhibition "China's Hidden Century". However, no information about the translator was given in the poems on display. , Chinese translator and poet Yilin Wang later discovered that the translations on display were exactly the same as those she had previously posted on her personal website, which subsequently triggered a heated discussion on social media.
In addition, according to Jiemian News , "Shakespeare's Tragedies" published by Tianjin People's Publishing House and translated by Mai Mang has also been exposed as suspected of plagiarism. Many paragraphs of text have a lot of similarities with the translation by translator Zhu Shenghao.According to the public account "Medieval History", , Han Sheng, a professor at the Department of History at Fudan University, discovered that the Japanese historian Miyazaki Ichisada's "Research on the Law of Nine-Rank Officials", which he spent more than ten years translating, was approved by the publishing company. plagiarized and published by Elephant Publishing House in 2020. The Pudong New Area People's Court determined in July 2023 that the Houlang version of the translation infringed the reproduction rights, distribution rights, and signature rights of Han Sheng's translation.
However, how to define borrowing and plagiarism has always been a controversial issue. In 2017, when Huang Shaozheng, a former associate professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of Qinghai Normal University, read the book "Exploring the English Rhythm of Chinese Poetry" written by Xu Yuanchong, he came to the conclusion that Xu Yuanchong's English level was low and many of his poems were plagiarized. In this regard, Jiemian Culture once wrote an article, and Xu Yuanchong also responded: His translation is not that the complexity is not up to standard, but it is in line with the "three beauties" (meaning beauty, sound beauty, and form beauty) proposed by Lu Xun; it is not the existence of articles. The mistake is to save the article in order to achieve the "three beauties"; it is not to copy Fletcher's version, but to beat him with the "three beauties" method after reading it. Xu Yuanchong also said, "Shakespeare is all plagiarism. His stories have been told before, but he told them better than others."
In addition, a more typical case in recent years is Jules Verne's "Captain Grant" In the plagiarism dispute of the Chinese translation of "The Sons and Daughters", the French translator Chen Xiaoqing was suspected of plagiarizing the translation of another translator Fan Xiheng. Fan Xiheng's daughter carefully compared the model version with the Chen version published by the Central Compilation and Translation Press and the Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, and believed that there were A large number of identical or substantially similar expressions. However, after the incident was filed, the Shanghai Xuhui District People's Court believed that it was still necessary to determine whether there was substantial similarity from the perspectives of "possibility of contact" and "comparison of details."
Reference materials:
"The Donner Brothers and Sisters" content introduction, Douban
https://book.douban.com/subject/36381786/?icn=index-latestbook-subject
Paris Review Editorial Department: Is it borrowing or plagiarism? 99 Scholars publishes rights protection statement for the translation of "The Tangner Brothers and Sisters", Douban, 2024.1.23 13:04
https://www.douban.com/note/858718851/?dt_dapp=1
Shanghai Translation Literature Room: About Shanghai Translation Publishing House's "Tang Statement on suspected plagiarism in the translation of "Na Brothers and Sisters", Douban, 2024.1.23 14:00
https://www.douban.com/note/858720555/?dt_dapp=1
Ye Hui (Douban@84973514): Trial translation of Robert Walser's " Donner Brothers and Sisters", Douban, 2018.11.14
https://www.douban.com/note/696653172/?dt_dapp=1&dt_platform=com.douban.activity.wechat_friends&_i=59209807jfg5aa,59837085zoz4ic
Ye Qing: Qiu Jin's Poems at the British Museum Exhibition make Translation plagiarism controversy | Cultural Weekly, Jiemian Culture, 2023.6.24
https://www.jiemian.com/article/9623594.html
He Xiangyi and Weng Huilin: Tianjin People’s Publishing House’s Shakespeare translation was accused of plagiarism in its entirety, Jiemian News, 2020.8. 19
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/jrphab-rpp0jyo9ihzot2g
Yang Qingxia: Article: The similarity is as high as 75%! Was the "Research on the Laws of Nine Rank Officials" translated by a professor from the History Department of Fudan University plagiarized? , Medieval History, 2021.10.17
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/eobd7_lqjfbocuxm8edwnq
Pan Wenjie: Xu Yuanchong responds to plagiarism accusations: I have read translations by famous writers before translating, but I translated better, Interface Culture, 2017.9.20
https:// www.jiemian.com/article/1631615.html
Zhang Yue: “It’s hard to explain by coincidence”: Plagiarism dispute of the well-known Chinese translation of “Captain Grant’s Children”, Southern Weekend, 2022.8.26
https://mp.weixin.qq.com /s/n2wkgj90kiszfze9ovbkmw
