If you’re going to steal my articles, try to do a better job than just copy-pasting my hard work, using the find-and-replace feature in Microsoft Word to make it slightly different, and calling it a day. Believe it or not, it’s not just plagiarism when you copy someone’s work in full; it also qualifies as such when you heavily rely on paraphrasing using other sources without properly citing them in your writing, as you’ve done here today. Let’s look at every part of your piece that went wrong today step by step so that maybe you can understand where to improve both this time and in the future.

Here’s my headline and introduction for an article I just ran last night compared to yours.

Mine:

Yours:

This continues into your actual summary of the Nikkei piece. Here’s my translation that I threw up of the whole Nikkei, start to finish. Like I’ve mentioned previously when I’ve pointed out your lapses in judgment in referencing my work incorrectly, take care to notice that not only did I cite the original Nikkei piece in my work, but also even where I originally heard about it from, which was NeoGAF, which in turn saw it on Twitter.

And here’s your version. Again, when writing something that originally came from another publication, it’s insufficient to slightly change the wording and structure here and there. Trimming some sentences to make for a slightly breezier article that otherwise follows my and the original Nikkei piece’s format to a T does not an original piece make. Observe, this is what you threw up, continuing directly off that first screenshot of the introduction:

As if it wasn’t apparent enough you couldn’t take the 20 minutes necessary to at least make it look like you spent a fraction of the time I did translating and doing the necessary background research, I also appreciate you using my exact exchange rate figures in the same manner as I originally wrote them up. Also, I forgot to mention this earlier, but kudos for linking to the Wikipedia page on round-tripping, which I also did for my readers in the comments section. I’m so glad we both have the interests of our audience at heart here.

While I can’t physically stop you from doing these antics, I will say that you know what you can do to correct this. Even just throwing up my translation in full in quotes and linking to my original Gematsu piece would be sufficient. You seem to have some complex about linking to your competition. Maybe it’s because doing so seemingly threatens your ad revenue, you worry about your readers leaving you to just subscribe to your source, whatever, but professional news outlets of all sizes like the ones you see on TV share stories with each other all of the time and always receive proper credit. Somehow they manage to stay afloat despite that practice!

As it stands, so long as you keep this up and I catch you doing it, I’ll throw up a new post detailing your offenses each and every time under the tag “Stolen by Siliconera”. What you’ve done here and in other articles is not only ethically abhorrent as a fellow writer, but is also costing me money I should be seeing in my monthly paychecks as a freelancer and credibility that I need to attract clients. I don’t plan to stop doing what I do just because you can’t maintain minimum standards, but I also don’t have to take it quietly and let the Internet remain blissfully unaware of all of this simply for the sake of keeping a superficial peace. This is my career as a translator and writer you’re hurting and it’s worth protecting as the thing that keeps the lights on in my house no matter who gets in the way of it.

Here’s a thought, though: maybe whatever sacrifices you feel you’d have to make to cite my work are actually worth it so I can stay in business, keep doing my thing, and give you articles that you then go on to reference on your own site. It is entirely to your benefit to play nice, but I can’t convince you of that. Either you change your ways of your own accord or you never do because nobody on the outside can actually force your hand. Still, as someone who is not only the son of a lawyer but has also spent extensive time in their undergraduate years studying legal systems from around the globe, I feel pretty confident that I know what I’m talking about here.

You should, too, if you’ve ever taken a day of college or even high school writing.

And in case you don’t, you’re welcome for the lesson. Should you ever wish to talk specifics about what you can do to rectify this, my public email for translation work is available here. Feel free to reach me there.

-Pepsi/Tom James