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  1. Sana başarılar diliyorum.
  2. :: New Corpus Maintainer ::
    Tatoeba has a new corpus maintainer:
    [JPN] tommy_san (http://tatoeba.org/eng/user/profile/tommy_san)
  3. :: New Advanced Contributor ::
    Tatoeba has a new advanced contributor:
    [ENG] patgfisher (http://tatoeba.org/eng/user/profile/patgfisher)
  4. Hello members of Tatoeba! This will be a long post, so please bear with me!

    First, I have to say I love the idea behind this site. I too dislike the formality of traditional dictionaries and instead prefer to see a language used in practice. I have but one issue - while it's nice to read full sentences instead of single words it still takes quite a lot of determination to learn a language by reading random sentences that aren't interconnected. The purpose of a dictionary is to teach new words. The purpose of Tatoeba seems to be teaching both new words and language constructs. But it is still quite boring to read every single entry and also quite ineffective, because remembering requires repetition. I have a very bold idea on how to improve on current state, although it would require a change of site's focus. Let me explain it in detail.

    Here's a set of features, that I'd like to see:
    1) Add an ability to add sentences in bulk. For example adding a whole article and then translating each sentence.
    2) Add an ability to browse these sentences in the order that they appear in the text. For a friendly user experience we would probably want the whole article to appear on screen, have the first translation appear in a popup on a mouse hover and have the entire sentence page on mouse click.

    Technically this wouldn't change anything in existing sentences. The table describing the sentence would just get a few new fields:
    TEXT_ID - the id of a larger text that the sentence is part of. Probably needs a better name to avoid confusion with the 'text' field which holds the sentence content.
    NEXT_SENTENCE_ID - the id of the next sentence in the text. This will be useful for navigating between sentence sites.
    PREV_SENTENCE_ID - the id of the previous sentence in the text.

    If a sentence isn't a part of a larger text, than these fields would just be null. If a sentence was added in bulk, then these values would be filled automatically. There are a few details to be taken care of such as identical sentences appearing in two texts, but you get the general idea.

    Now here's the real kicker and where it actually gets exciting. You see, we could add these two mentioned features to the API and enable 3rd party sites to work in the described way by communicating with Tatoeba. Here's a very rough overview that doesn't explain how exactly it would be done:

    1) Writers create accounts on Tatoeba and get issued a special security string or something along those lines. This string allows them to add content to Tatoeba through the API and automatically link it to their account. The added content isn't translated yet.
    2) Translators on Tatoeba search for untranslated articles and translate them. If we create a reputation system somewhat similiar to one on stackoverflow.com this would be a great addition to their resume, especially if they translate an article of a large website.
    3) The original site works as described in the second feature - hovering gives a translation of a sentence, clicking redirects to the sentence site. Exact behaviour should be configurable.
    4) Everything on Tatoeba works just as it did before with the exception that there might be some sentences with no translations.

    Let's see what everyone gains:
    1) Writers have their content translated without spending a dime.
    2) Readers of the 3rd party sites can improve a new language while reading something they would read anyway.
    3) Readers of the 3rd party sites that don't know the original language at all can instead read the translated version.
    4) Tatoeba contributors don't need to invent their own sentences.
    5) Tatoeba has a higher Google Page Rank thanks to all the links from external sites.
    6) Since authors add their work voluntarily, Tatoeba is no longer restricted to just the Creative Commons materials.
    7) Translators can gain experience and beef up their resume by supplying a link to their Tatoeba account (similiar to stackoverflow.com).
    8) Ebooks could get unofficial translations thanks to Tatoeba, thus increasing their availability and profit.
    9) The users of the Tatoeba database gain real world language usage along with it's translations, which would be invaluable for machine learning. Google for one would certainly be interested.

    I don't think that feature 9) should come free once Tatoeba gets more recognition. If the site somehow made money it would enable it to support a larger infrastructure and give additional incentive to the translators.

    Another way to earn money is to allow Writers to offer a prize for translating an article, thus generating more interest. Tatoeba would get a small cut of the prize, the rest would go to the actual translators. Such a mechanism would require a lot more thought though due to possible abuse and a problem with choosing the most appropriate translation.

    As for 8) - adding entire ebooks that are normally paid would require some additional restrictions, since users could just read it on Tatoeba instead of buying it. It is doable though and after all the final decision whether to add the content belongs to the ebook author.

    I wonder what do you think of such an idea? It's ambitious, yes, it requires a lot more polishing, true, but it's something that's really lacking in today's world and we are in a unique position to actually change it through collaborative effort. I gave you the big picture but it's obvious there are many little steps that would need to be accomplished first.

    Now that I probably have your attention a few words about me. I'm currently on my 5th year of Computer Science. I've discovered this site through Google Summer of Code. I'm very interested in applying to your organisation and starting working on the idea outlined above, which is basically an ambitious extension of the API idea on the ideas page. Obviously we'd have to set a reasonable scope for the summer, but if you like the idea I'd probably stick around after it's over anyway.

    If you'd like to know more about me you can visit my LinkedIn page: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=226962663 or just ask here ;) I'm highly motivated to get accepted into GSoC this year and it would be a pleasure to be a part of your team :)
    • These are interesting ideas. I suggest that you look at the "GSoC Project Ideas" page on our wiki ( http://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/arti...ow/gsoc_ideas# ) for ways to reach the developers, if you haven't already done so.
      • Yes, I did see this page, but I haven't contacted anyone yet. I wanted some feedback on the general idea first before I dive into the details and this seemed like the most lively place. Where do you suggest I head with this, IRC, XMPP or mailing lists? I don't want to spam every communication channel. Or maybe I should contact some developers directly?
        • Posting it on the mailing list is probably the best idea, since you've gone to the trouble of writing out your thoughts at length. IRC/XMPP (really just two ways to access the same chat room) is a better way to have a real-time conversation with developers, providing someone's there at the same time that you are. Don't worry about "spamming every communication channel". The developers tend not to hold their conversations on the Wall, so what you post there will be new to most of them.
  5. I would love to see a "button" (or "label") with an icon showing 2 mutually opposing arrows at the top of the page placed between the "From" and "To" language dropdowns that, when clicked, swaps the language choices in the dropdowns. When using Tatoeba as part of learning a new language, I often want to search for sentences translated from language A to language B, as well as sentences translated from language B to language A. A "swap language" button would make it very convenient instead of painstakingly doing it from the dropdowns.
    • It would indeed be nice to implement this in the user interface, but there's a user script that you can install to do this for you: Pandark's "Tatoeba Search Language Switcher" user script. You can find it, as well as other useful user scripts, on the wiki ( http://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/arti.../user-scripts# ).
  6. 1. How do I find the historical list of new sentences I have added?

    2. When do my sentences get translated? I searched for a word in one of my sentences I added maybe 3 weeks ago, and I still don't see my sentence appear in the search results.
    • 1. To find the list of sentences that you've added, first click on your username in the upper right-hand corner. Then, on the screen that comes up, click on "Sentences" in the upper right-hand corner.

      2. You won't see any sentences that have been added since the last time that the indexing script was run, and that was a while ago now. Next time I chat with sysko, I'll ask him to index again, and I'll also discuss with him what we can do to index regularly and frequently again.
      • Thank you for responding. I don't know how many new sentences are added daily and, more importantly, how many new sentences get translated everyday. But even if there are, say, 2000 such newly translated sentences every day, I would think that an automated script running nightly would take mere minutes to get indexed, no?
        • When I last spoke with sysko, he said it took about an hour to index. I believe the indexing is not incremental; it executes over the entire database. He also wants to make sure afterwards that the operation didn't cause any problems. Also, the site may need to be offline while the indexing script runs. But indeed, we do want to move toward periodic and frequent automatic indexing that will not require taking the site offline.
          • I don't know how the software is structured, but it would be neat if whenever any sentence is translated, it gets added immediately to a separate "daily", much smaller, index, and the software be instructed to first search the main index then search the smaller "daily" index and return the combined search results. The nightly job can then take whatever is in the "daily" index and merge it into the main index, and clear out the "daily" index when it's done for the next day. But yeah, automatic on-the-fly indexing would be ideal.
            • Yes, that sounds reasonable. One possible issue would be that old sentences change, so periodically there'd have to be a full indexing.
          • also a periodic and frequent deduplication is needed. the last one was done around the end of may
            • Definitely. Currently, the process takes longer than indexing (four hours as compared to one) and requires more verification afterwards, which is why it's done even less frequently.
              • Maybe I'm not the only one here who lacks insight into the details of the technical background. I'd find it helpful if you could explain if possible in plain English why a newly added sentence can be found by Google already one minute later but by Tatoeba only one month later.
            • By "deduplication" you mean weeding out sentences that already exist? Wouldn't that be done at the point a new sentence is attempted to be added/created? The user shouldn't be allowed to enter a sentence that already exists. Of course, if the new sentence differs by only a punctuation character (but not white spaces), it would, and probably should, be considered a new sentence.
              • deduplication = a script merges the exact duplicate sentences
              • >weeding out sentences that already exist? Wouldn't that be done at the point a new sentence is attempted to be added/created

                So, say you've got a sentence in English, and it is translated in French. Then you've got another sentence in Italian, and its translation in French happens to be exactly the same as the French translation of the English sentence. On what ground would you block its insertion ? Why miss precious translations ?

                The current deduplication procedure, although it takes place only once in a blue moon, actually MERGES duplicate sentences, ie it links all their translations, tags and comments to the merging result, which is far more efficient and intelligent than any manual merge or deletion of duplicates, that systematically DESTROY precious comments and translation links.

                JUST STOP MANUAL MERGE OR DELETION OF DUPLICATES !!!
                • i agree with that. along with the loss of better links we could get with the automatic merging of exact duplicates, there's also a huge waste of time, since users waste their time in doing things already done with a script in an automatic way rather than adding new content or proposing corrections to the existing one
                • Sacredceltic:
                  >>>> JUST STOP MANUAL MERGE OR DELETION OF DUPLICATES !!!

                  I agree with that.
                  Je suis d'accord avec ceci.
                  Wufqeɣ aya.
                  أنا أوافق هذا.
                  Estoy de acuerdo con eso.
                  Mi konsentas kun tio.
  7. Hello, I found out about Tatoeba during my search through the GSoC Mentoring Organisations and I am interested in contributing to the project as it is . I do not know from whom to request additional information as I am completely new to this site. Can someone help me regarding this question? Thank you.
    • Hello, what kind of additional information do you need?
    • Try AlanF_US. He posted http://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/arti...ow/gsoc_ideas#
      • I didn't actually post that page. I just edited it. But it does contain a lot of the information you need, and I saw that you had some extensive conversations on our chat channel, so I'm hoping you found answers to your questions. If not, you can always send me a private message. Better yet, send one to liori.
  8. Hi, I'm new to Tatoeba. どぞよろしくお願いします。=)
    • Hi! Nice to see you here.
      タトエバへようこそ！＾＾
  9. al_ex_an_der wrote: "I'd find it helpful if you could explain if possible in plain English why a newly added sentence can be found by Google already one minute later but by Tatoeba only one month later." I thought this was worth some discussion in a thread of its own.

    First of all, I did a little experiment to determine whether a Google search for a word contained in a sentence that I had added a minute earlier really would succeed. Answer: no, though in one case, it remarkably took only about fifteen minutes before a search ("incontrovertible site:tatoeba.org") found it. But searches for words that I added in sentences seventeen hours and one hour ago came up empty.

    To address Alexander's larger point: Why is it that Google indexes words so quickly, and Tatoeba takes so long? It comes down to differences in the hardware, software, human resources, and project management available to Google (a corporation with US$59 billion of revenue in 2013) and Tatoeba (a nonprofit whose budget is somewhat smaller). Google has vast "farms" of machines. Tatoeba has one. Even two machines would be a big improvement because one could index while the other was still actively handling requests and adding sentences. Getting from one to two, however, requires more funding, which demands organization, not just in terms of assembling a proposal for a grant or plans for fundraising, but for putting the money to use if and when it actually comes through. It also requires someone to write the code that can handle interaction between two computers operating in parallel. Software can accomplish what seems like magic, but it's not written by magic.

    Tatoeba.org can never hope to replicate the money or machines that Google.com has at its disposal, but we can do a far better job (even beyond the impressive things we already do) if we get a lot more participation in everything that makes the site run, beyond the operations of adding, commenting on, modifying, and deleting sentences. Many of the people essential to Google are not software developers, and much of what we're missing at Tatoeba can be provided by people who are not developers, either.

    In my last long post, I called for volunteers for testing, either at a high level (putting together a test plan and coordinating other volunteers), or simply working through some screens and determining whether they work. I also asked for someone to coordinate the translators who work on the code at Launchpad. Of course, I would have been glad if someone proposed to help in some way that I didn't even mention. But I was disappointed that no one responded at all. I want you to understand why people stepping up to help are not just nice to have, but essential.

    We've undergone some changes in the way we store code, and we need to undergo some changes in the way we put it on the server. If we don't test before and after we make these changes, we could easily break something without knowing that we've broken it. But testing takes time. If I am responsible for doing every level of test planning and testing, as well as planning how to move the code without losing anything, it will take weeks longer to get to the point where we can move it. It will also become likely that something else will change in the interim, so we'll have to begin the cycle again without making any progress.

    People who work at Google are motivated by some combination of enjoyment of the tasks involved in their jobs, satisfaction from accomplishing the assignments that they're not initially able to do, and financial incentives for doing their work. Their jobs require them to learn new skills and to do what has to be done, not just what they know they already enjoy doing.

    Tatoeba can't provide financial incentives, but we can give you everything else, including the chance to move beyond what you already know you can do to tackle what has to be done (write up a test plan, collect bug reports and enhancement requests from the Wall, fix code written in PHP even if your favorite programming language is Python), and feel proud of what you've accomplished. You can also feel pleased that you're keeping Tatoeba going so that you can continue to add sentences to the corpus.

    There is one more reason why we need a coordinated team to connect the gaps: You don't want anyone to burn out because they're asked to do too much. We all have commitments, and are limited to how much time we can contribute. If someone senses that he or she doesn't have enough time to do a job right, they'll drop out entirely. Let's make sure that we take full advantage of the incredibly talented people who've gotten us this far, and those who have yet to join us, by making sure that all the pieces fit together.

    Please send me a note telling me how you'd like to help. Many thanks!
    • To answer al_ex_an_der's question a little more directly (and concisely!): Even with only one computer available to us, we could undoubtedly write code to index sentences at the time they're added, and even prevent submission of duplicate sentences. But as of now, there are too few people (one? two?) who could make those changes, they are too busy with other tasks, and there's no pipeline to make sure that they we can get the suggestion to their attention and make sure they can get the change in once they have time available.
    • #
    • ruj
    • ruj
    • 10 day(s) ago
    Kiamaniere mi povas uzi tie chi la surchapeligitajn literojn de la esperanta alfabeto?
    • In addition to the solutions listed above, you can install the user script "Tatoeba Symbol Insert Helper". This page describes how user scripts work and are installed:

      http://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/arti.../user-scripts#

      If you search on that page for "Tatoeba Symbol Insert Helper", you'll see what it does and how to find it.
      • #
      • pne
      • pne
      • 9 day(s) ago
      Same kiel en ĉiuj aliaj retpaĝoj.

      Do, vi devas serĉi agordon en via mastruma sistemo aŭ via retfoliumilo kiu ebligos al vi tajpi la ĉapelitajn literojn.

      Ekzemple, sur Vindozo, oni povus uzi "Ek" (Esperanta Klavaro); en Fajrovulpo, estas Add-on "Transliterator" kiu enhavas multajn klavarojn, inter aliaj ankaŭ esperantan; ktp.
    • Mi rekomendas duoblilo, la plej komfortan metodon skribi literojn kun ĉapeloj per nur du tuŝoj de la sama klavo.

      http://members.aon.at/aldone/duoblilo.html

      Bonege! Ekzemple vi tajpas cc kaj tuj ricevas ĉ.
      Se vi volas ricevi cc (anstataŭ ĉ), vi tajpu c-c.

      Tajpante yy, vi ricevas ŭ.
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