Adding new sentences
Ideally, for any word you may want to search, we would like you to always get results. Indeed, one of the goala of the project is to illustrate as many words and expressions as possible.
However, even if there is a large amount of sentences, there is still a lot of vocabulary that is not covered. This is why we encourage you to add new sentences with new vocabulary, even if you do not know how to translate it into any language.
Just register if you have not done so already, then log in and go to the contribution section.
Translating sentences
Translating is one of the most important tasks in Tatoeba, since the main goal of the project is to gather sentences translated into several languages.
You can translate a sentence from pretty much everywhere. Just click on this icon 
whenever you see it.
Note that translations are limited to registered users. Click here to register.
Correcting mistakes
Tatoeba is a project that is open to everyone, and we are aware that people make mistakes.
It is not possible for you to directly correct mistakes in sentences that belong to other people because only the owner of the sentence can edit it. You can however post a comment (
) on the sentence to notify the mistake. The owner will have to correct it himself or herself.
In certain cases, the sentence do not have an owner. Read the paragraph below (on adopting sentences) to learn more.
Adopting sentences
When you add a sentence, this sentence "belongs" to you - only you can edit it. However, most of the sentences in Tatoeba come from a Japanese-English corpus called Tanaka Corpus. These sentences do not have any owner because they have been collected outside of Tatoeba.
If you see a mistake in an "orphan" sentence, you will not be able correct it because you are not the owner. This is why there is an "adopt" option (
). Once you adopt a sentence, you become its owner and therefore can edit it.
Adopting a sentence is also part the "quality process". You can find more information about it here: http://blog.tatoeba.org/2009/01/new-validation-system.html
Sentences lists
You can create lists of sentences in Tatoeba. By default the list is private, which means it can only be edited by the person who created it.
However it is also possible to let any member in Tatoeba add and remove sentences by setting a list as public.
Someday we will also introduce group lists, that only a restricted group of members can edit.