I can’t think of a scenario in which multiple 404 requests can be caused by a regular user on a well maintained site. Such a protection looks like a simple trap for scripts which try to collect information for the plugins used for example, no regular user whould do that
I verified that the .po file contains the translation of the string in question. The problem is related to the discovery of that string as for me. Can you confirm that you verified that the sring “ERROR: Password must be 7 characters or more.” is properly translated on your site?