Making a fool of myself

This will be a personal entry for a change: I just learned that intellectual property rights are taken very seriously on the German Wikipedia. I put in a translation of an article from the Catalan Wikipedia on Moisès Broggi, a surgeon born in 1908 with an interesting biography that I found relevant, and it was removed within minutes. The moderator found it superflous, I think, and then I found out on his discussion board that you cannot just translate articles from other Wikis. First, you have to ask for permission and name the article you want to translate. Then, they decide if they let you - and import all of the original article's history into your translation - if they finally accept it...
So, not a free for all, but a highly organized and hierarchical system. I then went to the English Wiki to see if my articles where still there, e.g. a partial translation of a Catalan article on Maria Barbal. It is still there but they want more references. But how to find references for an author who has not been translated into English yet?
I feel foolish to have invested an hour of my spare time into a little translation that was then just erased...