[REMOVED by CK: This comment was no longer needed.]

I come across unadopted Japanese sentences fairly often. For the most part, they don't seem too bad and I use them as if they were correct. (As far as translating them: I can't remember coming across an unowned Japanese sentence which didn't already have an English translation, so no worries there.) I have run across some iffy sounding sentences, and I usually post a comment on those asking if they are correct or not.

It's good to hear that about unadopted Japanese sentences. I usually tend not to pay them any attention when looking for vocab examples, just in case they're wrong.

I've had good results using unowned Japanese sentences to study. The error rate that I've observed is quite low. On rare occasions I look at my flash cards later, realize something is strange, and ask a Japanese friend to see what they think. But this has only happened maybe 5 times in the last year, so overall I'm rather happy.

(Also, the Japanese native speakers on this site who answer my questions and create example sentences have been a big help. I feel very lucky that they are around and active.)

I used to translate unadopted Japanese sentences I could understand. But then, after some alarming reports about the quality of those sentences Tommy and other Japanese members submitted, I decided to translate only the sentences created/owned by native speakers. That is, I avoid translating orphaned sentences and those owned by non-native speakers no matter how correct they look to me. As Tommy repeatedly pointed out in his messages, even grammatical Japanese sentences may still be absolutely unnatural and, thus, not just useless for a language learner (for a beginner, especially) but rather harmful. My Japanese level is simply not high enough to determine whether the sentence is good or not, so, as things now stand, I prefer to refrain from using/translating orphaned sentences and sentences owned by non-native speakers unless they tagged OK.

Ich finde viele der verwaisten japanischen Sätze seltsam und würde mir wünschen, daß Muttersprachler diese nach und nach durch natürliche, stilistisch einwandfreie Sätze ersetzten. Zum Beispiel hätte ich es für gut befunden, diesen Satz:

http://tatoeba.org/deu/sentences/show/152508

ohne viel Federlesens durch diesen:

http://tatoeba.org/deu/sentences/show/2449219

zu ersetzen, statt einen neuen hinzuzufügen.

Meine grundlegende Meinung: Sätze, die zeigen, wie man sich möglichst nah am Englischen ausdrückt, sind nicht lehrreich und gehören getilgt.

Trang hat mir in einer privaten Nachricht angekündigt, sich bald dazu zu äußern. Ich warte voller Ungeduld. ☺

Thank you all for your comments.

I asked this because I thought there might be someone who's somehow making good use of those doubtful sentences, but it seems there aren't any. I'm still interested in whether there are any fans of orphan sentences (of any language). Please give me a reply if you're one of them.

To those who don't distinguish between owned and unowned sentences, I strongly recommend you stop using Tatoeba that way unless you really want to waste your time. If you think that most of the orphan Japanese sentences are fine, that means you're not good enough at Japanese to judge. There are lots and lots of unnatural sentences that are literal translations of English, and many of them resemble the Japanese that beginners speak, so it might be especially difficult for native English speakers to find out what's wrong. It's true that most of them are good enough to make yourself understood. If you use them, most Japanese would understand you and say ニホンゴガオジョウズデスネー. But even so, serious learners must not try to learn from them.

I'd recommend any users interested in this topic to read this thread where we discussed the similar matter three months ago:
http://webcache.googleuserconte...&ct=clnk&gl=jp

@Pfirsichbaeumchen
I often don't feel like replacing an orphan sentence with my new one when I'm not sure if the sentence is really bad. You seem to trust us too much... we are only ordinary Japanese speakers. We can say "I wouldn't use this," but often we can't say "This is wrong." There might be lots of people who actually use the phrase I don't use. This is actually quite likely to happen since the divergence among speakers is significant. That's why I sometimes prefer leaving the original one as it is.

I guess you want us to reduce the number of orphan sentences displayed on the site, but it'll take us centuries to correct the 123,741 sentences. I believe the only realistic way to protect learners from harmful sentences is, as I've written many times, to stop displaying them by default. If there is any serious reason that everybody should see them, then I'd suggest adding a warning message on every page of an orphan sentence such as "This sentence has no owner, which means its quality is doubtful. It could be harmful for your brain. It could even kill you!"