Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
... but sometimes it's just Plagiarism
On April 3rd at 10:54 am Moldova time I sent out an article addressing the massive trade war that Donald Trump had just announced. Here’s a link in case you missed it and want to relive those early days of bewildering confusion:
I usually don’t rush to write an article when breaking news happened, but this was rather important. At that moment people were just figuring out what “logic,” if it could be called that, the Trump Administration had used to calculate the “reciprocal” tariff rates. Articles were being written in Moldova wondering what the country had done to Trump to deserve such harsh treatment, and I wanted to write an explainer. I was happy with the article and moved on1.
Only very recently did I become aware that a lot more people than I thought had read my article, but under a slightly different title. Namely:
In English, that article is entitled “Alexandru TĂNASE // Trump's new tariffs on Moldova make no sense.” It is an Opinion piece “written” by former Minister of Justice and President of the Constitutional Court Alexandru Tănase.
He opens his “opinion” with the following line - most of which is taken from the title of my piece:
“Trump's new tariffs make no sense - especially for Moldova. This is the conclusion of David Smith from the Moldova Matters platform.”
With the exception of the second sentence there, nearly the entire article is a direct translation of my work in to Romanian. Ironically, the only real difference is that I opened my piece with “Happy ‘liberation day’ to all those who celebrate” and had some similarly playful titles and clarification which he apparently found too unprofessional for the tone he wanted to cultivate with my words.
It was kind of Mr. Tănase to mention me at the beginning of the piece, which ran as his opinion on Deschide and Timpul. Kind, but also kinda weird. I mean, with the rest of the piece presented as his opinion it appears like he is quoting me saying “Trump's new tariffs make no sense - especially for Moldova” in his article. Like he felt it was sufficient to credit me with this line, the original title, but nothing else.
Another fun piece of this is the time it was posted - 14:57 April 3rd. Almost exactly 3 hours after I sent out my article he had arranged an opinion piece and managed to translate it into Romanian - perhaps with AI. Not that I’m judging, I love using AI to read things in other languages. But it is notable that he didn’t bother with proper formatting in line with the original piece which makes the whole thing just a little bit funnier. Section titles appear as just stand alone lines and he left out all the equations and graphics. I also provided lots of links to cite the sources I was using - which naturally were omitted as well.
Who is Alexandru Tănase?
Mr. Tănase was President of the Constitutional Court from 2011 - 2017, meaning that he served much of his time there, and later as Minister of Justice in 2018, under the regime of Vladimir Plahotniuc. Tănase’s legacy in the time of state capture remains mixed. He had left the bench before the time that the most serious and shocking Constitutional Court rulings were being made as the oligarch desperately tried to cling to power. At the same time he served on the board of Plahotniuc’s bank, seemingly favored him at times in the Constitutional Court, and then moved into his government as Minister of Justice at the height of state capture. Whatever your opinion of him, he was once a titan in Moldova’s justice system - and he remains a prominent political commentator on Moldovan news programs.
As he shares his opinions there in the future, I only hope that they are indeed his. Or that he learns to use “quotation marks.”
I’ve written to both publications that ran his “opinion” piece, Deschide and Timpul, demanding a retraction and acknowledgment of the unattributed source material. Naturally, that won’t change the fact that numerous people read that article and believed at the time that it was Mr. Tănase’s own work. Nor will it impact the many people reached on social media. Plagiarism is a funny thing, it can seem like a victimless crime at times - especially when things are translated into another language. But I feel that it reflects very poorly on the people stealing another person’s work and trying to pass it off as their own. A former judge in particular should know something about stealing. We’ll see what Deschide and Timpul do with the information I sent them, but a real remedy would more properly be an acknowledgment and apology from Mr. Tănase himself.
…and since he seems to be a reader, I guess he’ll just have to do what he thinks is right.
Whether prudent, or because TACO, those tariffs never came into effect either.
Thank you for sharing your story. My name is Vicki Witte.