@AlanF_US
Why is it kept in the corpus then? Could it be a book title or something?
It's a translation of a Japanese phrase that probably comes from the Tanaka Corpus. Such sentences are often indexed somewhere outside Tatoeba, and I've found from experience that deleting them at Tatoeba generally raises an objection. I've never quite understood the full picture of how these sentences are supposed to fulfill both the aims of the Tanaka Corpus and the Tatoeba Project, so I welcome an explanation from @fcbond, @blay_paul, @JimBreen, and/or @TRANG.
For more information, see:
http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/Tanaka_Corpus
or JimBreen's comments:
https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentenc..._user/JimBreen
The background to the Japanese-English sentence pairs in the Tanaka Corpus is explained at: http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/Tanaka_Corpus
The "Tanaka Corpus" is probably best viewed now as a subset of the Japanese-English sentence pairs within Tatoeba that have been indexed at the Japanese term level for use in dictionary applications. The indexing is explained at: http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index...ionary_Linking Those indices are currently maintained by a special function within the Tatoeba project.
I monitor changes to the Japanese-English sentence pairs, including deletions. I particularly want to avoid changes which result in a loss of examples of usage of particular terms. In the case of this sentence it is the only example we have of 徹する being used in the "to do throughout (e.g. the night)" sense.
I realise that "夜を徹するか否か。" is not what would be regarded as a complete sentence, but I would not support its deletion unless it was replaced with another which demonstrated the use of 徹する in that sense.
The Japanese may be regarded as an uncomplete sentence, but couldn't one also regard it as something that could be said, if not for the exact wording, for its construction. It's like "to be or not to be". If we don't append the usual "that is the question", will it be a "complete" sentence?
@Aiji
Very well put. This is what this sentence reminded me of, too. Let's wait for native speakers to answer :-)
Thanks for the thorough explanation, Jim.
Aiji, "To be or not to be", by itself, would not be considered a complete sentence, or a valid fragment. But "To be or not to be, that is the question" would be considered complete. See this page:
https://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/art...ood-sentences#
Ideally, sentences that reside at Tatoeba that belong to the Tanaka Corpus should:
(1) satisfy the requirements for both the Tanaka Corpus and Tatoeba (for instance, must be complete sentences or valid fragments, with capitalization and punctuation that satisfies the rules for English or Japanese, respectively)
(2) be identifiable from the sentence page (ideally, via a tag) as belonging to the Tanaka Corpus
Where sentences do not meet condition (1), there should be some kind of process for fixing them. We have a shortage of users in our community who know both languages well, so any help that can be provided by the Tanaka caretakers would be greatly appreciated. I'm wondering whether any of the people I've tagged in this discussion would be willing to fix sentences if issues are raised about them.
Regarding condition (2), I'm wondering whether we could execute a one-time operation that adds a tag to the 150718 sentences in the corpus. I added an issue ticket for this:
https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/2098
By the way, note that near the bottom of this page about the Tanaka Corpus:
http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index...ionary_Linking
there's a bad link (with anchor text "Tatoeba site") to the Japanese index:
http://tatoeba.org/files/downloads/wwwjdic.csv
It should be changed to point here:
http://downloads.tatoeba.org/ex...ndices.tar.bz2
Adding members with knowledge of Japanese to the discussion:
@small_snow @CK @Pfirsichbaeumchen
Trang, thanks for adding the "Tanaka Corpus" tag to the sentences!
@AlanF_US
Has the tag "Tanaka Corpus" been just added or is it an old tag? Can you "mass-tag" sentences and if yes, how?
この日本語の文は、自然な文です。
日本語の文にコメントを追加しました。(読み方もお見逃しなく!)
[#74433]夜を徹するか否か。
----English
This Japanese sentence is a natural sentence.
I added some comments to the Japanese sentence.(Note that how to read, too.)
Please see [#74433]夜を徹するか否か。
Summary: It's a sentence of "asking oneself a question".
Should I stay up all night or not?
@AlanF_US @Pfirsichbaeumchen
I have a question.
I want to know how to write "自問自答" in English.
How you write one? Please tell me.
@Amastan: A wizard did it: https://github.com/Tatoeba/tato...ment-578518689
@AlanF_US
Thanks for the alert about the out-of-date URL for downloading the JE indices. I have replaced it with the current URL. I still reference the "wwwjdic.csv" version as that's the one described in the text on that page.
@small_snow
Thank you for the confirmation of the meaning of the sentence, and its validity. I think I will add your "Should I stay up all night or not?" as an alternative English sentence, as I think it matches the Japanese better than the current sentence.
PS: I would translate the "自問自答" 四字熟語 as something like "answering one's own question" or "thinking out loud".
If I use French, I almost always use the "Should I / Must I" form or add "The question now is" (do I stay up all night or not) because soliloquies (自問自答) are impossible to translate literally. It's a very common difficulty with Japanese, though, like all the words you can make by combining two kanjis of opposite meaning. I guess many English sentences of the Tanaka Corpus are translated too literaly, like was the case with many French sentences.
@Amastan, there is currently no method open to general contributors for mass-tagging sentences, though the topic is under active discussion:
https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/785
I'm guessing that Trang applied the tag directly via the database software. I'm also guessing that she created the tag itself today.
@JimBreen @Pfirsichbaeumchen
Thank you for your responses. I will use "thinking out loud"!
[#74433] 夜を徹するか否か。
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We cannot determine yet whether this sentence was initially derived from translation or not.
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added by blay_paul, June 30, 2008