TUBITAK PROJECT ON PLAGIARISM IN TRANSLATION

Plagiarism in Translation, which has recently become popular and a current issue in Turkey, is a subject of a research project supported by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey).
Asistant Prof. Dr. Mehmet Şahin from Department of English Translation and Interpreting in Izmir University of Economics will conduct this project. Asistant Prof. Dr. Derya Duman and Sabri Gürses, a writer and a translator who has carried out studies about plagiarism in translation, will participate in this project as researchers. MA student in Translation Studies, Damla Kaleş will assist as a project scholar.

The main objectives of this two-year project are to determine the fake translations which are launched in the market under the mask of “retranslations” as far as possible, to set the motives of genuine and fake retranslation activity, to discuss the validity of those motives and to disclose plagiaristic characteristics of retranslations, to search the features of a genuine retranslation. By accomplishing of these objectives, Asist. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Şahin states that it is aimed to increase public awareness of translational plagiarism in the field of Translation Studies, Literary translation and Translation Education. He adds “Plagiarism in Translation that has been a matter in Çeviribilim web journal since 2005 and in the special issue of Varlık journal with “Translation Piracy” title in 2007 also became focus in Plagiarism Commission Report released as a collaborative work of Çev-Bir (Translators Professional Association) and Yay-Bir (Publishers Assocation). Within this project, plagiarism in translation will widely be discussed and concrete steps are aimed to be taken in order to prevent plagiarism in translation.”

Project team who is experienced in their work fields and shows awareness in plagiarism will discuss instances of plagiarism in translated works that are included in the 100 Must-Read Book List declared by the Ministry of Education through documentary research, corpus linguistics, forensic linguistics and text linguistics. With this project, pecuniary and non pecuniary loss caused by fake retranslations will be revealed scientifically. Within the framework of this project, a report and a guide on plagiarism in translation will be published.

Moreover, as a first step of the project supported by TÜBİTAK, the project team will give a presentation titled “Kidnapped Voices: The big business of plagiarism in (re)translation” in the 3rd International Translation Conference organized by Yıldız Teknik University in 8-10 May 2013.