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If you want to sound like a native speaker, it's easier if you choose one dialect and stick with it. Native speakers don't usually mix dialects in everyday speaking.
The Tatoeba Project, which can be found online at tatoeba.org, is working on creating a large database of example sentences translated into many languages.
If you translate from your second language into your own native language, rather than the other way around, you're less likely to make mistakes.
It's very easy to sound natural in your own native language, and very easy to sound unnatural in your non-native language.
What is considered impolite in one language may not be considered impolite in another language.
One way to lower the number of errors in the Tatoeba Corpus would be to encourage people to only translate into their native languages.
As you contribute more sentences to the Tatoeba Corpus in your native language, the percentage of sentences in your native language with errors will likely decrease.
It may be impossible to get a completely error-free corpus due to the nature of this kind of collaborative effort. However, if we encourage members to contribute sentences in their own languages rather than experiment in languages they are learning, we might be able to minimize errors.
The Tatoeba Corpus is not error-free. Due to the nature of a public collaborative project, this data will never be 100% free of errors.
Under the Tatoeba guidelines, it is recommended that members only add sentences in their native language and/or translate from a language they can understand into their native language. The reason for this is that it is much easier to form natural-sounding sentences in one's native language. When we write in a language other than our native language, it is very easy to produce sentences that sound strange. Please make sure you only translate the sentence if you are sure you know what it means.
Language learning software, no matter how nice it looks and works, is only as good as the data it uses.
It's dangerous to assume that all of the sentences in the Tatoeba Corpus are correct and suitable for language study.
I know that adding sentences only in your native or strongest language is probably not as much fun as practicing writing foreign languages, but please don't add sentences to the Tatoeba Corpus if you are not absolutely sure they are correct. If you want to practice languages that you are studying, please do so by using a website designed for that purpose such as www.lang-8.com.
We recommend adding sentences and translations in your strongest language. If you are interested primarily in having your sentences corrected, you should try a site like Lang-8.com, where that's the focus.
I recommend contributing sentences in your own native language, since people will be able to trust that what you have contributed is likely to be good and natural-sounding.
Remember that the purpose of the Tatoeba Project is to create example sentences that can be used for studying languages. It's not really a place to be contributing non-native language sentences for others to correct for you.
Tom thinks that I'm romantic.
Tom said he knew that was what Mary ought to do.
It's sort of like eating wild mushrooms collected by a stranger who claims that he knows which mushrooms are poisonous and which are not.
It's best to translate from a foreign language you know into your own native language.
Sentences added by a native speaker are more trustworthy than those added by a non-native speaker. This doesn't mean that non-native speakers are always wrong and that native speakers are always correct. However, it is easier to trust that a native speaker's sentences are likely to be correct, so a wise language learner or researcher would rather have those.