*** INTRODUCTION ***
Welcome! I've collected a little information here so that you have an idea of my background and philosophy. I hope that you are as excited by Tatoeba as I have been ever since 2012, when I discovered the site.

*** LANGUAGES ***
English is my native language. My other languages are Esperanto, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, in which I have varying levels of ability. I feel comfortable translating into English from any of those languages.

I've spent almost all of my life in the northeastern United States. However, several decades ago, I lived in Germany for a year and a half, and later translated scientific and engineering material (including a textbook) from German to English. Here at Tatoeba, I've translated from German to English upon request (perhaps a hundred sentences or so). However, I've done far more translation from Hebrew to English (from late 2012 until early 2017), and from Russian to English (from early 2017 to the present).

*** CONTRIBUTIONS TO TATOEBA ***
I started getting involved at Tatoeba in November 2012. In January 2014, I began coordinating between administrators, developers, and contributors. In March 2014, I officially became an admin myself.

In addition to general tasks related to sentences (adding, linking, correcting, etc.), I have done the following:

- edited documentation on the wiki ( https://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/articles/show/main# ) and elsewhere
- submitted and updated tickets to record bug reports and enhancement requests
- fixed bugs, made enhancements, and fulfilled requests, especially those relating to:
-- user interface text
-- database consistency
-- audio
-- remembering user preferences
-- character sets

The time that I can invest in Tatoeba is limited, in terms of both total time and what I can spend on any particular day. Therefore, I choose my tasks carefully.

*** RESOURCES BEYOND TATOEBA ***
Tatoeba is a fantastic resource, one that I have spent much time using and much effort improving, but I would not urge anyone to try to meet all their language learning needs here. For that, I recommend that people use a combination of textbooks, instructional audio, and the following online resources:
* multilingual dictionaries, such as
- Wiktionary ( https://en.wiktionary.org )
- dict.cc ( https://dict.cc )
- Glosbe ( https://glosbe.com/ ), and
- Morfix ( https://morfix.co.il/en )
* online corpus sites, such as those listed on this page posted by Brigham Young University: https://corpus.byu.edu/
* pronunciation guides, such as Forvo ( https://forvo.com )
* language forum sites, such as Unilang ( https://unilang.org )
* sites that allow members to submit and correct essays, such as
- LangCorrect ( https://langcorrect.com )
- Italki ( https://italki.com)
- Lang-8 ( https://lang-8.com, unfortunately closed to new accounts )
* sites that let you create flashcard decks, such as Anki ( https://apps.ankiweb.net )
* sites that offer language-learning games, such as Duolingo ( https://duolingo.com ) and Clozemaster ( https://clozemaster.com )

Note that many of these resources use sentences from Tatoeba..

*** PHILOSOPHY ***
**** CONTRIBUTING OUTSIDE ONE'S NATIVE/STRONGEST LANGUAGE ****
I originally believed that people should only contribute sentences in their native/strongest language. However, my thinking has evolved. I now encourage contributors to follow the guidelines here:

https://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/art...ow/non-native#

**** FORMALITY ****
Most users of Tatoeba are looking for a way to improve their knowledge of a language (or the knowledge of a community of other language learners). I believe they are best helped by sample sentences that correspond to current standard usage, with an emphasis on written language, from a context that is neither extremely formal nor extremely informal. I try to write my contributions accordingly.

**** LANGUAGES I DISPLAY BY DEFAULT ****
deu,eng,epo,fra,heb,ita,por,rus,spa

*** FREQUENT SEARCHES ***

I put links to my frequent searches here for my own use, but feel free to copy them. If you use Firefox, you can make these into keyword searches. After that, you can type, for example, "tatetor swan" into your address bar to display, in random order, English sentences with the word "swan" that have a direct link to Russian sentences.

Russian to any:
tatrtoa: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentenc...andom&query=%s

Hebrew to any:
tathtoa: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentenc...andom&query=%s

French to any:
tatftoa: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentenc...andom&query=%s

English to Russian:
tatetor: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentenc...andom&query=%s

English to Hebrew:
tatetoh: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentenc...andom&query=%s

English to French:
tatetof: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentenc...andom&query=%s