Notes about the correction I just made:
“He took no notice that…” doesn’t seem like correct English to me. There were two possible corrections I thought of that carry different meanings.

The one I didn’t choose was “He took no notice of the sick man sleeping in the next room.”. That would mean that he noticed the sick man, but decided to ignore him.

The one I chose means that he was not aware of the sick man at any point. This is consistent with the existing links to the French and Portuguese sentences, I don’t know whether it is consistent with the Japanese or Esperanto.

The one you didn't choose is the one that matches the Japanese.
I would assume that the people who translated into other languages may have gone for that meaning, too.

In that case it seems that the best option is to delink the Japanese sentence and newly add the English sentence that matches it.

The French and Portuguese sentences match the English sentence as it currently is and do not match the “He took no notice of …” version, so if I change it again right now the best case scenario is that I’m changing it from consistent with only two of the four to consistent with only the other two.

As it is though, I find it more likely that the Esperanto matches the French & Portuguese (note that the Japanese sentence is only directly linked to the English sentence, while the Esperanto sentence is directly linked to both the French and the Portuguese), which would mean that changing the English sentence right now would make it worse (from three correct links down to just one).

The problem is that the English-Japanese were the initial pair and this link should be maintained, because Jim Breen uses this data in his project.

Also, one of our rules is to not change things that aren't wrong. See Rule #2 in the Quick Start Guide.

This search shows that at some people use this wording.

"took no notice that there" -"was a sick man"
https://www.google.com/search?q...0sick%20man%22

The -"was a sick man" part of the search eliminates all Tatoeba Project influenced results, but may also eliminate other results, too.

In my opinion, you should revert this sentence back to its original wording, and then unadopt it if you don't feel that it deserves your "stamp of approval."

If the other direct translations are mistranslations, they should be unlinked.


Remove the 'there" from the search and you'll find even more examples.
https://www.google.com/search?n...+a+sick+man%22

Firstly, I’ll respond to the claim that I broke a rule. Rule 2 in the Quick Start Guide has the following link marked as its source:
http://blog.tatoeba.org/2010/02...eba.html#rule5
At the linked section of this page it says ‘… before you modify a sentence, look at it without paying attention to its translations, and ask yourself "Does this sentence have any spelling or grammar mistake? Does it sound weird?". If the answer is "No", then do NOT edit it, leave it alone!’.
I asked myself if the “He took no notice that” version of the sentence sounded weird, and my answer was that it did. I therefore do not believe that I have broken this rule.

My interpretation of the rules and guidelines of Tatoeba is that if you see an unadopted sentence that sounds weird, you should change it so that it doesn’t, and if you completely endorse the correctness of the resulting sentence, you should keep control of it. If you find that you have multiple options for what to change it to, you should then consider the links, if any, and make it consistent with as many of them as you can.

Clearly, you have a contrasting intepretation of these rules. Since you are an admin, I will comply with your request for me to let go of the sentence, but I’m not going to make a change I disagree with. “He took no notice that” still does not sound correct to me, even given the Google results showing that some users of English sometimes use it.

Later, when it doesn’t amount to adding a duplicate, I might decide to re‐add the current version of the sentence as a new translation of either the French or the Portuguese, I’m fairly sure that won’t violate anyone’s interpretation of the rules. I would add the “He took no notice of” version too, but I’m not good enough at Japanese that I can confidently endorse it as a translation, and I don’t think it’s worth me adding it as an unlinked sentence.

I didn't mean to imply you were doing anything intentionally wrong.

You just need to remember that there are many different dialects of English and what may sound weird to you, may sound perfectly natural to a native speaker of another dialect of English. There are also generational differences within the same dialect. That's very likely the reason Trang has this guideline.

I would suggest after reverting this to its original, that you add your translation as a direct translation of one of the other languages that you know. That's a very normal thing to do here. It would also be a good idea to leave a comment on any sentence that you believe is a mistranslation.

Maybe we need to add a new rule "Don't change a sentence unless you are sure it will still match all the direct translations." It's not clearly stated anywhere, is it?