Indicating Plagiarism in the Urdu Literature and Ways to Eliminate It
The Urdu is suffering from a very bad fate due to the plagiarism these days. Undoubtedly, the Urdu language, both prose and poetry has seen some great writers, authors, columnists, and poets. However, it is a great discouragement and disappointment for them to see their excellent pieces of literature or the poetry being plagiarized.
Following are the major types of the plagiarism in the Urdu literature and some practical ways to eliminate it.
Types of plagiarism
Idea stealing
This is the most common form of plagiarism. Many so-called Urdu writers or poets steal ideas of others and publish in their names.
Shameless Lifting
This is an extremely bad, in fact, evil trend in this country that people shamelessly lift pieces of other and publish it. It is rampant in two ways.
Common people lift literary works of great Urdu writers and send them to be published in weekly magazines and monthly digests etc.
the publishing houses publish plagiarized Urdu books.
Unaccredited translations
The Urdu weekly magazines and monthly digests are replete with the unaccredited translations. This is also a very bad trend of the Pakistani magazines. People get money for the Urdu pieces that they never wrote but only translated.
Unaccredited compilations
The publishing houses compile the excellent literary pieces, essays, stories pr poems by several different writers and poets. They neither ask for the permission of the writers and poets nor give them any part in the immense profits that they make from such Urdu books.
Ways to eliminate plagiarism
Strict regulations
With the internet boom and all the sate of plagiarism in the Urdu literature is even on the rise. The laws about plagiarism are outdated and confusing. The government needs to pass strict laws to eliminate the plagiarism from the Urdu literature.
The rule of law
Along with passing the laws the government must also make sure that, they are implemented. This is especially important in Pakistan. Here often rules are made but they are never implemented.
Breaking the monopoly of the publishing houses
The state of the publishing houses in the country is also worthy of the discussion. In Pakistan, there are only some publishing houses. These few publishing houses have made their monopoly in the books publishing. They aid the plagiarism to make huge profits for themselves. If the monopoly of these publishing houses is broken and the new smaller publishers are given a chance then the situation can improve a lot. The Urdu literature can also survive this way only.
Respect for the literature of other languages and countries
We also need to make the masses have a respect for languages other than Urdu. Here the general attitude of the public is that they do not give any importance to the fact that the unaccredited translations are simply stealing. This is earning Urdu an extremely bad name in the international community.
We will have to respect others languages if we want our language to be respected.