Is it okay to copy someone’s work when you credit them without permission?
Robert X. Cringely is a blogger who was one of those unfortunate enough to experience being a victim of copyright.
Cringely is a technology journalist. He has worked 8 years at a weekly computer trade newspaper called Infoworld and the author of Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Vallley Make their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date. He has a lot more credentials which you will find at the About Bob link on his website. (www.cringely.com)
On June 28,2016 he uploaded an article at his site where he wrote how he felt about Online Journalism. He talked about his own experience in digital media and compared it to Print. You can read about his blog here.
He was just a regular blogger trying to get his opinions out on his website when the unthinkable happened: Someone from China translated his work in Chinese and posted it on their site without his permission. If you aren’t Chinese and want to attempt to understand it, click here as I wish you the best of luck.
Now you may think it’s not all that bad. If you actually clicked the Chinese site I hyperlinked up there you would see that he was actually credited. They put his name there before pasting the probably google translated article. He gave a one page rant about this copyright incident.
What bothers him isn’t mostly about the ‘taking his work without permission’ and uploading it to their website without informing him. It’s more about the translating itself. He told about his experience in translating his English articles to Japanese, so he knows its not just the language that makes things like this complicated.
I kind of agree with Bob here. As a Chinese myself, I know how different English words can mean in Chinese.
Like how 笨蛋 (pèn tàn) when translated one character at a time means ‘Stupid’ and ‘Egg’ which when combined in english says ‘Stupid Egg’. People who take this literally can think it’s someone complaining about an egg but in reality it just means plain Stupid. Or if you add one Chinese character to that word 大笨蛋 (Dà pèn tàn) which the new character means ‘Big’ so if you read it one by one you would read Big Stupid Egg when it really means Idiot. Though it would mean the same thing the words are still different and can still be translated differently.
Another example could be 他妈的(da ma dé). The first character means ‘Him/Her’, the second means ‘mom’, and the third word is mostly just a filler like ‘it’ or ‘but’ (well not really but it’s the best way to explain it in English). You may translate it as his or her mom’s, you would have no idea that it actually means the ‘f’ word.
In Chinese, the world ‘Mom’ is usually related to curse words. People who speak english also have phrases like ‘Back to your mommy’ or even those ‘Yo Mama’ jokes. In Chinese, you don’t know that a simple ‘His Mom’ would mean worse than that.
If your head isn’t spinning with all the information I just dropped, do you see what I mean yet? Even if you study Chinese words word by word, if you didn’t grow up with the language it can be very misleading and confusing. I am Chinese and I have grown up with the language but 3/4 of the language still confuses me (Who won’t be confused by 5000 years worth of words in Chinese?).
Cringely, through experience, know this. Which is why you can’t blame him for being angry about his work being published in another language without his permission.
So is it okay to copy someone’s work even when you credit them without permission?
No. You have to ask permission. Without permission, you are violating a Copyright content.
Cringely as a journalist/Blogger has had experience in translating his works in different languages (all stated in his bio). As a journalist, I bet he would have loved his work to be published in a lot of places, especially a country where not everything can get in easily (i.e. Facebook isn’t even allowed in China till now).
Cringely would have happily worked on translating his work in Chinese and would have been a double win. Since the words need emphasizing, ASK PERMISSION. Use this as a tip if you ever want to credit someone’s work one day.
