This is an interesting question. Duplicate publication is a grey area that not all authors or even journal editors are very clear about. While in most cases, duplicate publication is considered a form of academic fraud, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) uses the term “secondary publication” to describe acceptable republication of manuscripts that have already been published. These include rare cases in which an article needs to reach the widest possible audience, through republication either in another journal or in another language.

However, a number of conditions need to be met for duplicate publication, even in another language, to be acceptable:

1.       The authors must receive formal approval from the editors of both journals, and the journal editor responsible for the secondary publication must have a copy of the primary published version.

2.       There should be an interval of at least one week between publications.

3.       The secondary publication should be clearly intended for a different group of readers, and should faithfully reflect the data and interpretations discussed in the primary version.

4.       In the secondary publication, the title should indicate that the paper has been published before, and a footnote on the title page should provide a reference for the primary publication.

So, to answer your question simply, reproducing a paper that was previously published in another language would be considered duplication, unless all the above conditions are met. The most important thing is that the editors of both journals are informed of the circumstances and agree to the republication.

I hope this answers your question. Feel free to post your views about this or any other questions you may have in the comments section.