I'm aware of that. I've done it enough it times. Incidentally, I've probably linked hundreds (if not thousands) of your sentences to German sentences in the process.

Thanks @AlanF_US. That's more like what I meant.

Lately, I've been translating sentences using a list of sentences using a method like Cabo's to find German sentences that don't have a direct English translation. Until now, when I come to Tatoeba to add my translations, I've often found that the sentences I've written

1. already exist as *indirect* translations;
2. differ in some trivial way from existing indirect translations;
3. are significantly different from existing indirect translations.

I always add my translation when 3) is true, but not always when 2) is true, even when I prefer my sentence, and personally wouldn't use/say the existing sentence because of the wording, the spelling, the different preposition: whatever. In this situation, having come up with my own translation away from the site and therefore unaware of any indirect translations, 2) can be annoying. Why not just add my own translation? I sometimes do, but there has been talk here of cutting down on translations that don't add value. If it's a matter of adding a sentence I would say or write as opposed to an existing one I wouldn't, then I think adding my sentence would be valuable. What's valuable to one person is not, of course, to another.

When I look at *direct* English-German translations here – let alone indirect ones – and translate the German sentence myself, it's not uncommon that I end up with a different English sentence than the existing one. No big surprise there, of course. We all have different ways of speaking. It's partly, though in no way completely down to the fact that I grew up in a different part of the world, speaking a different English to most contributors here. The difference is made a lot starker, however, because my English differs from that of the most active contributor here by far who has, I believe, fifty trillion sentences to his name.

> So it seems like working from search results, despite the drawbacks, may be the best way to go.

Not when your computer freezes for minutes at a time trying to render a search results page. And anyway, I've come to like translating offline. My translations might not be any better for it, but there isn't the pressure to press the "submit translation" button prematurely. I can come back later to a half-completed translation and finish it. But I would never have gone to all this trouble if it weren't for the slowness and limit on search results of the site search.

This is the same search as a template, which means you can insert a search query, or just click the "search" button to see any German sentence without any links to English.

This is set for random output, but you can easily change to another "sort," if you like.

https://tatoeba.org/en/sentence...roved=no&user=

A 1,000 sentence limit shouldn't be a problem, since as you add translations, you'll get a different set of 1,000 sentences.

Perhaps you would also like to turn on the "Owned by a self-identified native" option.