International translation of docs - is it a scam?

[Chris Gonnerman]

On the 30th of May, I received an email from a man (I'll leave out his
name, but it was properly male) offering to translate the docs for the
gdmodule (which I maintain) into Belorussian. He wanted my approval,
and a link from my page to his. This seemed fair, so I told him to tell
me when it was ready.

This morning, I received an email from him that it was done. I looked
at the page, and it looked good. Of course, I don't read Belorussian,
but it had the right "shape" and linked to my downloads. But at the
same time, I received an email with a female sender name on it. It was
worded almost identically to the first email, but was offering to
translate my WConio page into Belorussian.

The Belorussian gdmodule page is here:

http://webhostingrating.com/libs/gdmodule-be

Now, webhostingrating.com is a site that rates web hosting providers,
and at least on the surface seems legitimate. I can't find any links
from their front page to the section with the Belorussian
translation(s), which strikes me odd.

What's going on here? Has anyone else been approached by these people?

-- Chris.

 

[Alain Ketterlin]

On the 30th of May, I received an email from a man (I'll leave out his
name, but it was properly male) offering to translate the docs for the
gdmodule (which I maintain) into Belorussian. [...]

The same has happened on the gcc list, where it has been considered a
scam. See, e.g.,

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2011-05/msg00046.html

and messages referenced therein.

-- Alain.

 

[Peter Pearson]

On the 30th of May, I received an email from a man (I'll leave out his
name, but it was properly male) offering to translate the docs for the
gdmodule (which I maintain) into Belorussian. [...]

The same has happened on the gcc list, where it has been considered a
scam. See, e.g.,

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2011-05/msg00046.html

and messages referenced therein.

Interesting. That link leads to a discussion of presumed link
farmers using Google Translate to translate other people's pages,
in exchange for links.

So I asked Google Translate to translate Chris Gonnerman's
page, http://newcenturycomputers.net/projects/gdmodule.html
, and the results were identical (on cursory examination) to
the page produced by Gonnerman's correspondent, as reported
in the original post. (I won't post that URL here lest I
support the farm.)

 

[Phil Thompson]

On the 30th of May, I received an email from a man (I'll leave out his
name, but it was properly male) offering to translate the docs for the
gdmodule (which I maintain) into Belorussian. [...]

The same has happened on the gcc list, where it has been considered a
scam. See, e.g.,

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2011-05/msg00046.html

and messages referenced therein.

Interesting. That link leads to a discussion of presumed link
farmers using Google Translate to translate other people's pages,
in exchange for links.

So I asked Google Translate to translate Chris Gonnerman's
page, http://newcenturycomputers.net/projects/gdmodule.html
, and the results were identical (on cursory examination) to
the page produced by Gonnerman's correspondent, as reported
in the original post. (I won't post that URL here lest I
support the farm.)

I was also asked for permission to translate a page from the PyQt site. I
agreed to this and was given a link containing the translation. I declined
to link to the page from my site (I will only link to sites with a proven
track record.) I note that the page has now been removed.

Phil