So, if you follow me on Twitter you might have seen a status that looked like this a week or so ago.

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Just found a German version of one of my stories online. Only mildly bothered (this is still a grey area for me) only they claimed it was an authorised translation. So I left a review asking them to change that statement. Reasonable reaction? https://www.fanfiktion.de/s/5a1b35f6000359a8288c21ce/1/Marauders-039-Mayhem …

I and Jo Raskoph left reviews of the offending story letting them know that I'd written it and hadn't authorised any translation. I've historically been a little hesitant to have translations of my work on other sites. However, this I suspect is mostly to do with the fact I've only been asked about How to tame a Marauder, and that's 284000 words long and I am concerned the nuances in the text would be lost. Also, it's kind of my baby and I like to have control over where it's posted, as I'm sure you can appreciate.

The fic in question here, Marauders' Mayhem, was written in about an hour for a challenge and I'd not really looked at it since. In other words, it's not something that's quite as dear to my heart as HTM is, so I was a bit unsure whether I wanted the translation to be online or not. It's only a one-shot, so how much did it really matter if the translation wasn't quite right? Nuances and the like don't seem so important when you're only talking about 2000 words.

Anyway, yesterday I received a review on one of my other stories, at AO3. It wasn't a review, though - it was a note from the person who had posted the translation to the German site. It seems that there had been an account on Wattpad under the name melian225, which is the name I always use when melian isn't available (AO3, FF.net, Twitter), where apparently a number of my works were posted. I need hardly say that this person was NOT me - I'm not a fan of Wattpad and have never posted my stories there.The person who had translated my story approached the Wattpad version of myself, asking for permission, which was given. As such, they believed they did have authorisation to post the translation. Only after receiving my and Jo's reviews did they question that, and approached the person at Wattpad. Guess what? Instead of responding, said person deleted their account.

So, I was asked, what did I want them to do? They would love me to give approval for the translation to remain online, but if I didn't, they were happy to remove it.

Well, I don't know about you, but I very much appreciate it when people are open and honest with me like that. From the sounds of it, it was very much an honest mistake, in which they believed they were doing the right thing. And, like I said, this story isn't exactly my baby.

Long story short, I've given my approval for it to stay up there. But I wanted to share my experience. Sometimes, what looks like plagiarism isn't really - and if you reach out to someone, sometimes you can start a dialogue that furthers friendship and cooperation.

Wattpad, though ... I'm getting a bit sick of Wattpad. As I'm sure a number of us are.