VOA慢速英语20060520b

IN THE NEWS - The Difference Between Giving Credit¹ and Taking Credit: PlagiarismBy Nancy Steinbach

Broadcast: Saturday, May 20, 2006

I'm Steve Ember with IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

This is the opening weekend for the movie version³ of The Da Vinci Code⁴. The mystery about art, religion and murder is based on the book by Dan Brown. The latest reports say his three-year-old book has already sold sixty million copies worldwide.


Theater in Hong Kong

It also led to a trial earlier this year in Britain. Two writers accused Dan Brown of plagiarism² -- stealing someone else's words or ideas. They said he copied the main idea of their book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

A High Court judge in London did not agree. He said the idea was too general to be considered protected under British copyright⁵ laws.

Recently a number of stories involving accusations⁶ of plagiarism have been in the news.

Kaavya Viswanathan, a nineteen-year-old student at Harvard University, lost a major book deal. It appeared she copied from five other writers in parts of her book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. Her publisher, Little, Brown & Company, finally withdrew⁷ the young-adult novel from sale.


Kaavya Viswanathan

Earlier, she told the New York Times that some of the plagiarism may have happened because she remembers what she reads. I really thought the words were my own, she said.

Another situation involved the chief of Raytheon, a leading defense⁸ company. William Swanson wrote a small, unpublished work called Swanson's Unwritten Laws of Management. The company offered it free to anyone interested.

But some of it came from material that did not receive credit, including a nineteen forty-four book, The Unwritten Laws of Engineering⁹.

Mister¹⁰ Swanson apologized. He said he meant the advice as an expression of old rules, but in terms of his own experience over the years. Raytheon directors took action to punish him with about one million dollars in lost pay. Mister Swanson earned seven million dollars last year.

Plagiarism has always been an issue in schools. Teachers say the Internet has made it much easier to find and copy material. But teachers have their ways to use the Internet to catch plagiarism.

Turnitin, for example, is a Web site that offers a service to identify papers that contain copied material. It says a common mistake is to believe that electronic material is not private property in the same way books are.

Punishments for plagiarism differ in schools. A high school student might fail the project. A college student might fail the class and be suspended¹¹ for a year. In some colleges and universities, a student or professor caught plagiarizing¹² might be told to leave and never return.

Using information from experts is usually OK, as long as where the material came from is identified. Any material copied word-for-word is supposed to appear inside quotation¹³ marks. Where people get in trouble is when they try to claim other people's words as their own.

IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English was written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember.

1 credit   

n.信用，荣誉，贷款，学分；v.归功于，赞颂，信任

参考例句：

• I credit him with a certain amount of sense.我认为他有一定的见识。
• He got the credit,and we did the dirty work.他得荣誉，我们做不讨好的工作。

2 plagiarism   

n.剽窃，抄袭

参考例句：

• Teachers in America fight to control cheating and plagiarism.美国老师们努力对付欺骗和剽窃的问题。
• Now he's in real trouble.He's accused of plagiarism.现在他是真遇到麻烦了。他被指控剽窃。

3 version   

n.版本；型号；叙述，说法

参考例句：

• His version of the events is pure supposition.他对这件事的说法纯属猜测。
• What is your version of this matter?你对这件事情的看法 怎么样？

4 code   

n.代码，代号，密码；法典，法规，规划

参考例句：

• What's the code for Tianjin?天津的代号是多少？
• Remember to use postal code.勿忘使用邮政编码。

5 copyright   

n.版权，著作权

参考例句：

• He retained the copyright of his book.他保留此书的著作权。
• This company has a proprietorship of the copyright.这家公司拥有版权所有权。

6 accusations   

n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名

参考例句：

• There were accusations of plagiarism. 曾有过关于剽窃的指控。
• He remained unruffled by their accusations. 对于他们的指控他处之泰然。

7 withdrew   

v.取[收]回( withdraw的过去式 )；（使）撤退[出]；提；收回

参考例句：

• She withdrew to confer with her advisers before announcing a decision. 她先去请教顾问然后再宣布决定。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She quickly withdrew her hand from the hot iron. 她很快地将手从火烫的熨斗上缩了回来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

9 engineering   

n.工程，工程学，管理，操纵

参考例句：

• The science of engineering began as soon as man learned to use tools. 人类一学会使用工具,工程科学就开始了。
• It was the first great engineering works in the world. 这是世界上第一家大型的工程工厂。

10 mister   

n.(略作Mr.全称很少用于书面)先生

参考例句：

• Mister Smith is my good friend.史密斯先生是我的好朋友。
• He styled himself " Mister Clean ".他自称是“清廉先生”。

11 suspended   

a.被暂时搁置的

参考例句：

• A lamp was suspended from the ceiling. 一盏吊灯悬在天花板上。
• The British government has now suspended humanitarian aid to the area. 英国政府现已暂停对这一地区的人道主义援助。

12 plagiarizing   

v.剽窃，抄袭( plagiarize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He was accused of plagiarizing his colleague's results. 他被指控剽窃同事的成果。
• Moderates are plagiarizing his ideas in hopes of wooing voters. 温和派为讨好选民在盗用他的观点。 来自辞典例句

13 quotation   

n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情

参考例句：

• He finished his speech with a quotation from Shakespeare.他讲话结束时引用了莎士比亚的语录。
• The quotation is omitted here.此处引文从略。