: Re: Is translating into another language plagiarism? I'm currently writing my Masters thesis in English. If I take some (small) German text snippets from some papers (I'm German-speaking) and just

@Annie587

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If you use someone else's ideas in an academic paper without giving them credit, that is plagiarism.

If you have some hazy case and you're unsure, just give the original writer credit. It's easy to avoid committing plagiarism: just add a footnote. It's not that you can't use someone else's ideas. You just have to give the footnote.

You don't need to give credit for things that are "common knowledge". For example, if you say, "France is in Europe", you don't need to give a source. There are thousands of sources for that. When I was in school, I was taught that if you can find it in three sources, it's "common knowledge". That seems a little simplistic to me, but it might be a workable rule of thumb.

A math formula might or might not be common knowledge.

Note that plagiarism is not the same thing as copyright violation. If you're not sure of the difference, that's a different question.

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