Webpage Translation without permission?

[WellOiledPC]

Recently, I discovered that my review of IrfanView has been viewed in Chinese.

Is this some kind of IPR infringement, or is it normal and does it happen all the time?

[matera]

I don't think translation is an infringement. If the the translated review were to be published on a Chinese website, that would be.

A sneakier mode of theft is through the use of an i-frame. I found one of my pages getting too many hits once and concluded that it had been i-framed. I made some changes.

[WellOiledPC]

Thanks, matera. Your reply makes perfectly good sense.

A few months ago, I found someone visiting my website too often. I blocked off his IP for a week and he never returned after I unblocked him.

[matera]

It pays to watch stats. I once had an amazing bandwidth suckage from Poland because an image was being hot-linked for a forum avatar. I had some fun with that one... and tidied up my htaccess after

[WellOiledPC]

That could be real fun - I guess you simply changed the image, retaining the location, before limiting access?

Here is some news from Reuters about Google Translations into Chinese. So whatever the translation was about, I'm at least in good company!

[impdf]

A while ago I found on a website translated versions of the impdf.dll (together with screenshots). But not only the official releases delivered with Irfanview they also took the experimental versions from our website. Nobody asked at any time...

Same for paint.dll, riot.dll, ...

http://chenmy.hanzify.org/article.asp?id=92

[MItaly]

I too found that site by watching the stats of IrfanPaint website; since in that time I was finishing the translations support for IrfanPaint, I tried to recruit them as translators, but they didn't reply. Strange people...

[luciansabo]

The man behind chenmy.hanzify.org replied me after I accused him publicly of distributing an unauthorized binary modified version of RIOT
http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/2009/01/riot-in-chinese/

here is what he said:

I've translated RIOT in chinese with a localization tool named
Multilizer. It is not a hack tool. I'm sorry to do this work without
your permission.

I like your program RIOT very much and want to introduce it to all the
Chinese people. If I can get your permission, I want to make a
official translation. If not, I'll take the translated versions off my
blog.

And here is what I replied:

Using unapproved methods I cannot guarantee the software remains intact and secure.
It is nothing personal, I appreciate what you did, but please understand I cannot let you create an official translation this way.
You don't have to remove the chinese version from your blog. Just be sure to include a notice like this: "This is not an official translation. Use this on your own risk. The author has nothing to do with this translation and does not offer localized versions of RIOT for now. This translation was created using a resource modification program"

[matera]

I'm glad that there has been at least one amicable discussion.

Goodness knows, I do my share of resource-hacking, but I only distribute the results privately if at all (My various hacked Windows Solitaire files have been shared with family and friends lol).

[WellOiledPC]

Definitely not good, impdf!

luciansabo, yours is a very sober and well thought-out reply. Trust you get a suitable, satisfactory response.

There is this massive dispute between Google and the Chinese authorities, about illegal translations, currently. Piracy has long been a major, major problem in China...

I notice many other translations into Italian, Russian, etc., but the interesting fact is, those are for different pages of my website (not the IrfanView page alone) and they are a handful - 3, 4 or 5 views alone. On the other hand, my IrfanView review page has been hit and translated into Chinese (via Google China) over 650 times this month already!

I am not comfortable with so many hits! I do not think they are up to much good and MItaly - your experience only strengthens this belief of mine!