Can Turnitin Detect Translated Texts

Plagiarism is your major worry when curating an article or any school-given writing piece. But the use of plagiarism checkers such as Turnitin can help you put these fears to rest.

However, other concerns, such as translated text, can still be burdensome despite tackling plagiarism. So, can Turnitin detect translated text? With many writings relying on secondary data and probably running out of time, you may decide to translate existing articles. But are you safe if it is run on Turnitin?

This article delves deeper to ascertain whether Turnitin can detect translated text or the different languages. Let’s jump right in.

Can Turnitin Detect Translated Texts

Turnitin can detect translated texts. Turnitin is a popular service for teachers, students, and researchers to check for plagiarism in their writing. It works by scanning your text for patterns unique to the work you submit. If it finds something similar to your submission in its database, it will flag it.

Turnitin can detect translated text, although to a certain extent. It is a sophisticated tool that looks at an uploaded document against millions of others on its database or other third-party websites.

For translation, Turnitin can easily detect the translations. It does this by translating any text into English and running it against other documents. Therefore, its system can pick any translation and pass it as original or plagiarized. It will look for strings of text that are identical in both content and length and compare them with other internet sources.

Turnitin can translate French, Czech, Swedish, Italian, and German into English. Despite this high detection level, it can only detect plagiarism if the text has been translated from another language to English, but not from English to the other languages.

If you don’t want Turnitin to detect your work as plagiarized, simply avoid copying and pasting text from other websites.

Can Turnitin Tell if You Used Google Translate?

As Turnitin’s algorithm becomes more sophisticated, it may be able to detect if you’ve used Google Translate or another translation service to translate your work into English.

Even though they have not explicitly stated that the tool could detect translated text, they have made it clear that they are developing new features to help detect copied material.

For the most part, Turnitin can detect whether you’ve used Google Translate. Turnitin detects translated texts by looking at the language used. If two or more sentences are identical in structure, they’re likely copied from the same source. In fact, even if the text isn’t identical, Turnitin can still spot when two texts are related because both will share similar words and phrases.

In particular, Turnitin uses a list of over 4 million words that it knows are “Google Translate” words or common English words. It then compares those words against your paper. If there are too many matches, it will flag your paper as being translated by Google Translate.

However, there are some limitations to this method.

• It will only detect Google Translate if you use Turnitin’s same words on its database.
• It doesn’t detect when human translators have translated texts
• It only checks for these matches at the sentence level.

Can You Plagiarize if you Translate?

Your paper can be flagged even if you translate.

You may be creating an entirely new work when you translate, but when you consider all of the details, it becomes clear that your translated text is still plagiarized. While the act of translation requires some originality, the content of your translated work is still plagiarized.

You may wonder if merely acknowledging the source is sufficient to avoid plagiarism. Unfortunately, it’s not enough. Plagiarism is a form of cheating, and if you are caught committing this academic offense, you could face serious consequences such as expulsion or a failing grade.

Nevertheless, there are ways to escape this trap. You can paraphrase the text either independently or by using paraphrasing tools to beat turnitin.

Turnitin uses several different ways to detect plagiarism, including detecting when text has been translated using Google Translate or Microsoft Translator.

Submitting an assignment that has been translated using Google Translate or Microsoft Translator will be flagged because these tools do not always produce accurate results.

When Turnitin detects plagiarism, it will tell you exactly what it found so you can make adjustments accordingly before submitting your assignment for marking.

Can Turnitin Detect Different Languages?

Turnitin has continually developed its systems, and it can now detect several languages. Currently, you can upload your papers in 30 different languages, and the tool will do its work of checking your paper against its database.

Some of these languages include German, Czech, Norwegian, Hungarian, Italian, English, French, Korean, hai, Croatian, Danish, Catalan, Finnish, and Dutch.

There are two scenarios in these different languages. If you submit a paper in Italian, it can only be checked against other Italian papers. Secondly, your professor can purchase the additional language feature to enable them to check against different languages.

Generally, you are safe to translate from different languages, but you need to paraphrase the content to avoid getting caught. But if your institution has paid for the different languages feature, it is best to write your paper, seek the services of a professional writer, or use the best paraphrasing tools.

Conclusion

Turnitin can help you as a student, no matter how many foreign language classes you might be taking. It imposes a structure that allows even the most disorganized student to pay attention to certain submission requirements.

The system is customizable and compatible with most current computer systems meaning it can work on virtually any level, from high school through college or beyond.

So, can Turnitin detect translated texts? Yes, it can. But it depends on the language source and destination. If translating from English to other languages, it cannot detect, but it can detect if translating to English.

The only aspect you need to know and do to avoid being caught is careful editing or paraphrasing.