Think twice before you plagiarize. Should you end up in a significant position, people will find out and make a scandal out of it, especially if you get carried away and translate dozens of pages from another work without crediting the source. Pál Schmitt, the current President of Hungary got accused of serious plagiarism by the Hungarian weekly HVG. According to their estimation, 180 out of the 215 pages of Schmitt’s doctoral thesis “The Analysis of the Program of Modern Era Olympic Games” are direct translations and summaries of Bulgarian sport researcher Nikolai Georgiev’s study. The original, French language work was filed to the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Studies Center in 1987, while the doctoral thesis of the President was submitted to the Faculty of Physical Education (currently part of Semmelweis University) in 1992.
The accusation was denied by the Office of the President, pointing out that Georgijev and Schmitt were good friends who used the same material for their dissertations. The condition which makes reasoning rather hard regarding the question is that in the doctoral thesis of the President, the precise citations are simply missing – another concern that makes even the modest critiques skeptical about at least the justification of the ”summa cum laude” mark that Schmitt received. What is more, Schmitt’s Hungarian text is full of spelling mistakes, repeatedly misspelling even fundamental words such as soccer, martial arts and wrestling. This is not the first time when the President’s spelling skills are being questioned: in March, he managed to misspell two Hungarian words (including ”head of state”) in a five word note he left in a guestbook at a tavern. The Hungarian internet was buzzing with practical jokes about the issue that time, and so it is right now. Yet a lot of people think that it is getting less and less funny: it is the President that we are talking about, not some random celebrity after all.
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