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marafon
3 days ago
CK
3 days ago
sharptoothed
9 days ago
Cangarejo
9 days ago
Cangarejo
12 days ago
Thanuir
12 days ago
ondo
13 days ago
ddnktr
13 days ago
ondo
13 days ago
AlanF_US
16 days ago
[not needed anymore- removed by CK]
A dark blue would probably clash with the rest of the color scheme here. A dark green taken from our logo might not.
The top 20 contributors own 28% of sentences on Tatoeba.
The top 50 own about 49%.
The top 100 own about 58%.
29% of all sentences on Tatoeba have no owners.
Is there a list of top contributors anywhere?
Not that it's relevant, but it's interesting nonetheless ;-)
We could add a "like" button that could beixed with or not with the "heart" button:
Anyone who pushes it will be listed above the comments that heorshe likes it, just like in facebook, but not connected to facebook, just localy on tatoeba.
Papabear later took up a similar idea here: http://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/sho...3#message_5733
Someone talked a "like" system a while back, but perhaps we can use it as a measure of how natural a sentence sounds.
It will produce the same crap as search engines: After enough time, mistakes become the rule, simply because people who make them are more numerous than people who don't. The victory of ignorance over expertise !
OK, in English, usage rules, regardless of how it originated. But it isn't the case with other languages that have inner structures and rules. So the number of votes is irrelevant.
> OK, in English, usage rules, regardless of how it originated. But it isn't the case with other languages that have inner structures and rules.
Actually, all languages (except some constructed ones) work like English. The only difference is that some languages are more resistant to change than others. English has rules just like French, but they change faster.
> So the number of votes is irrelevant.
I think you're misunderstanding papabear. The "liking" system would not be used to determine whether a sentence is correct, but only if it sounds natural to native speakers (and votes are relevant in all languages for this). Naturalness and correctness are distinct - it's very easy to write sentences that are perfectly correct but sound strange.
>actually, all languages (except some constructed ones) work like English. The only difference is that some languages are more resistant to change than others. English has rules just like French, but they change faster.
No you're wrong. Chinese, for instance, has a strong inner structure and usage is second to that.
But there are other differences. For instance, in French, Law is key in defining the language, because French Law is entirely written, and not based on cases, such as in the anglo-saxon judicial system. Consequently, terms must be defined very precisely and for a very long time. That is why the French administration relies on an Academy to help it define terminology unambiguously. US or UK laws, so far, do not need such a non-ambiguity,because they're mainly local and case-based, so they are always prone to interpretation by local judges, which French Law is not. As a matter of fact, whenever there are 2 words used by the French, one being street based and the other one being official terminology, the official terminology always ends up prevailing, because it percolates through contracts, businesses, professions, trainings, education, etc...At the end of the day, only official words subside with very few exceptions.
This is the opposite in English.
In German, although most Germans would deny having an "official German" and deride the french Academy, there is nevertheless a written Law with a necessary official terminology and official writing rules which have been recently reformed. So usage is not the law in German either.
Japanese has also been repeatedly reformed by state decrees. And so has been Mandarin.
I think the idea that a language is defined by usage, such as English, contrary to English speakers perception, is actually a minority case in the world languages. Most official languages are mainly states' constructions.
> No you're wrong. Chinese, for instance, has a strong inner structure and usage is second to that.
And English has no "strong inner structure"? You kind of give the impression that you think that English is inherently "bad" or illogical. It's really just like countless other languages. I'm annoyed with its overly large world influence just as much as you are... just don't blame it on the language itself.
> But there are other differences. For instance, in French, Law is key in defining the language, because French Law is entirely written, and not based on cases, such as in the anglo-saxon judicial system. ...
I don't think differences in judicial systems are very relevant. Also, have you ever read US laws? They're pretty meticulous about terminology...
> I think the idea that a language is defined by usage, such as English, contrary to English speakers perception, is actually a minority case in the world languages.
For someone who constantly talks about minority languages, the irony is amazing. There are ~7,000 languages in the world. (It depends a lot on how you count.) The ratio of languages to countries is ~35:1. So I'm guessing languages like French are in the minority there. Even English is much less based on usage than most of the languages in the world. (And language regulation is a fairly new concept in most languages, even French. Keep in mind that people have been speaking languages for thousands of years.)
>And English has no "strong inner structure"?
No. English is the superposition of 4 different and completely inconsistent corpus and rules, from saxon, latin, franco-norman and danish...
>I don't think differences in judicial systems are very relevant. Also, have you ever read US laws? They're pretty meticulous about terminology...
Yes they do very much. Because the same word must be unequivocal from Lille to Marseille. When in the USA, it is not always necessary, since most Law is local...
France is also a very centralised country with a central administration and a centrally administered public school system, that receives instructions to strictly abide by official terminology. That doesn't exist in the USA, the UK or any other English-speaking country.
French is mainly constructed by the state since the XVIIth century, when English is mainly constructed by the street. Deny it as you may, this is the way it is.
>There are ~7,000 languages in the world. (It depends a lot on how you count.) The ratio of languages to countries is ~35:1. So I'm guessing languages like French are in the minority there. Even English is much less based on usage than most of the languages in the world. (And language regulation is a fairly new concept in most languages, even French.
Yes, I was refering to "official languages" if you read me precisely.
Indeed, most languages are not official, and that is why they're exterminated by official ones. Several languages disappear every year from the surface of Earth, as a result.
English is solely based on usage, since there is no authority of the language.
Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown solemnly declared that the UK was "offering English to the world". Well..the world uses it and transforms it...outside of any framework.
Language regulation is born with nations with a written Law. Because Law describes the entire world and, more than any other institution, needs to name everything. More and more languages will be regulated because more and more Law is being written. Even British Law is now progressively moving from case-base to written, under the influence of EU Law, since EU Law must be transcripted into national Law.
Because of that, I predict a growing tension between a Euro-Law-English and the streets-English(es) in the rest of the world. Maybe internet will unify it, maybe not...
> No you're wrong. Chinese, for instance, has a strong inner structure and usage is second to that.
False. Chinese has a strong inner structure but usage is not second to inner structure. Practically, Chinese Mandarin works a lot like English (or English like Chinese Mandarin). Rules and usage are equally important.
I bet 100€ you would contradict me here. I won.
Cool. Yet what you just said about Chinese language is bullsh*t, it needed to be corrected.
Well, if you say Chinese is driven by usage, you must be deluded and I would question your ability to produce chinese sentences here...
Mandarin, at least, has systematically been defined by the state and its educational system, since very early, including more recently, by Mao himself. Written Mandarin, at least, is probably one of the most constructed languages of all, because it served the state's unity to unify and standardise the written language. In China, even more than in France, the written language has always been an instrument of the administration, and I am curious to know how many words from usage in the extended Chinese Diaspora has made it to the official status in China. Probably none. So the bullshit is pretty much on the "usage legend's" side, I would think...
I said "Rules and usage are equally important." Read it twice.
Now you may want to prove your statement ? You seem to know a lot more about Chinese language as a whole than I do... ?
>You seem to know a lot more about Chinese language as a whole than I do... ?
Yeah, I probably read my first history of China and its language(s) several years before you were born...
I started learning Chinese ideogramms when I was 20. I think you probably saw the first one a decade later...
Yeah we all already know that you're an oldie and that anyone else below the age of 45 just can't put two words together. Now come on, prove us how broad your knowledge is!
I am not you, alas. I wish I had mastered 6 languages at the age of 22, as you do. For me, as for most of us poor souls, it was just plain hard work and reading hundreds of books and translating long texts. Not everybody gets to sucking the world's literature from their feeding bottles...You should thank your parents!
du reste, je l'avais presque oublié, mais mon mémoire de fin d'études portait sur l'adoption du système d'écriture chinois par le Japon...Une absurdité qui dure depuis plus de 1000 ans...
*subside => prevail
> think you're misunderstanding papabear. The "liking" system would not be used to determine whether a sentence is correct, but only if it sounds natural to native speakers (and votes are relevant in all languages for this). Naturalness and correctness are distinct - it's very easy to write sentences that are perfectly correct but sound strange.
To a French, almost every turn of phrase by a French speaking inhabitant of Québec doesn't sound natural, and I'm sure it's the same with Austrian German to a standard German, Sichan Chinese to a standard Chinese, etc...
So the proposed system would end up being the law of the majority of the voters, regardless of the biases they have from their origin, age, social class etc...although these biases rule, as I have shown earlier.
The number of votes to decide whether a phrase is "natural" (whatever that means) is utterly irrelevant. It is just an imperialist view of languages and it would result only in further marginalising minorities.
Yes, I agree completely. Too often, I edit sentences from the Tanaka Corpus that are perfectly good British English, but sound strange to me, and then CK corrects me. I was only trying to make sure that you understood what I think papabear was suggesting. I don't think it's actually a good idea.
You've all convinced me that it's a bad idea, too. Let's move on.
I agree with Sacredceltic there: there are some sentences written in Tatoeba that sound quite odd to me, but that are completely natural for the people from Mexico, Chile or Argentina, or any other South American kind of Spanish. So the only thing that would be useful would be to tag the sentence according to the place where it's said (if it is really natural somewhere) or tag it as unnatural or modify it in case it isn't.
As I've said before when this has been raised, I have my doubts as to how representative Tatoebans are of the speakers of their language. I also see practial problems with setting up such a system, even to get data on the relative popularity of such sentences among Tatoebans.
There are actually 3 different biases that explain why Tatoeba is NOT representative of languages' speakers:
1) Age bias: Most users are either younger than 25 or older than 60. The reason is that active people hardly dedicate time to such an activity.
2) Interest bias; Most users are people interested in languages, because they are multilingual/of mixed cultures/mixed backgrounds, but most speakers of languages are not multilingual, and not that interested in languages. In the UK, for instance, 77% of people do not speak a second language.
3) Linguistic bias: Most users are people who understand what this service is about at first glance, but in most cases, that implies that one has to understand English, because the chance is that if you find Tatoeba through a search engine, you will find its description in English. Then one will see wall messages, and most of them are, again, in English, because most active contributors and all moderators speak English on Tatoeba (an sometimes chase the people who don't, to the point that a message was introduced to tell people that they could use the language of their choice). A number of people who do not like or do not understand English will feel it is not for them and will subsequently ignore the service. I had myself that impression at the start and almost backed out.
As I repeated over and over again, the vast majority of multilingual people on this planet do not speak English.
I will give 4 examples from different areas of the world (but there are hundreds of others):
If you are for instance Kabyle from Algeria, the main probability is that you speak 3 or 4 languages and they would be: Algerian Arabic, Berber (which has nothing to do with the former), French and possibly Classical Arabic.
If you are Kazakh, the chance is that you speak Kazakh, Russian, and possibly Uzbek or another central asian language, but no English.
If you are Kurdish, you speak Kurdic, probably Turkic and/or Iraqian Arabic and/or Persian.
If you are an educated person from Kerala in India, you speak Malayalam, Hindi, and possibly Tamil because it is one of the linguae francae in Southern India...
There are billions of such people in the world who speak 2, 3 or more languages, without speaking English...
It is symptomatic, for instance, that we do not have any Swahili's contributor, although Swahili is a lingua franca in a vast swathe of Eastern Africa. The same is also true of Quechua, Wolof, Urdu, Tamil and hundreds of languages for which these languages serve as an intermediary, when English doesn't.
In order to correct this bias, more versions of the interface should be created as well as local descriptions of the service that can be retrieved locally through search engines, and the moderation should be de-centralised, to create regional groups of which English should not necessarily be the main moderation's language. Otherwise Tatoeba will remain a rich western teenagers's toy...
This gets me to thinking: should Tatoeba reach out to, say, linguists around the world who specialize in minority languages? Or perhaps even to the people who edit the Wikipedia articles for these languages? (We do have some prominent Wikipedians among us.)
The problem I see with this is which languages we would use to contact such people, although I'm sure it depends on the person. Or perhaps we just have to keep waiting....
>Or perhaps we just have to keep waiting....
I think the waiting has been on for the last 4 years...
>I have my doubts as to how representative Tatoebans are of the speakers of their language.
At last, you notice!
“As I've said before when this has been raised …”
You have my vote for this year's Tatoeba award in both selective reading and selective memory categories.
I have mentioned this here: http://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/sho...2#message_5572
But my idea was not to vote, whether one thinks that a sentence is correct or not, but just that one likes it, because it is e.g. intelligent, beautiful, etc.
Maybe we could add this to the "heart" feature. What i wanted to push was the social part: Users that like a sentence should be (optionally) listed there. And maybe we should think about a publishing feature for facebook, twitter etc. so one can share the most beautiful sentences with the world and attract new users.
Tatoeba has been updated!
--------------------------
http://blog.tatoeba.org/2011/04...-7th-2011.html
- The language of the sentence is indicated in the comments (on homepage and comments pages).
- Tatoeba will remember the last language you've picked when you translate or add a sentence (provided you did not set your browser to refuse cookies).
- You can set your language preferences in your settings. This will filter the (direct and indirect) translations to be displayed only in the languages you've indicated. You will still be able to view sentences that are not in your languages, only the translations are affected. Additionally, the list of languages that you see when you translate or add a new sentence will be restricted to the languages in your settings.
- And one more small thing: translations are ordered by language (based on the ISO code).
--------------------------
If you notice that you do not see all the translations anymore, but only translations in one language, one way to solve it is to go to your settings, and set your languages options. This should affect mostly trusted users. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Can we have a checkbox to show all translations, but still restrict adding sentences to languages in the list? I like having less languages to choose from, but I really want to see translations in all languages.
Also, filtering direct translations could make it difficult to find out how indirect translations are linked. Maybe direct translations should always be shown?
Maybe it would help to be able to toggle between browse- and contribute-modes. In the browse mode, one could filter out everything but the languages that one's interested in, but then one could switch to contribution mode to get a more inclusive view.
Something like a link in the upper right corner, near the other interface settings.
> Can we have a checkbox to show all translations
Not for now. It's either both or none. And the next step will rather be a link that lets you hide/display the remaning translations.
> Also, filtering direct translations could make it
> difficult to find out how indirect translations are
> linked.
Honestly, whether direct translations are displayed or not, I don't find it easy to figure out how indirect translations are linked ^^ In the end you still have to look at the logs (unless there is only 1 direct translation), and the logs are not filtered.
In case it's fine to mention this here, and seeing how you're still working on changes to this interface, here are a couple of feature requests:
Turn that little arrow between the translate-from and translate-to language selectors in the search form into a clickable element which swaps the two languages. I find that I regularly search for words of phrases back and forth between two languages.
An alternative method would be to remove the distinction between the two so that a search would look for matches in both languages. I'm not sure if this would work well between similar languages, though.
I think the second suggestion has been brought up before, and may actually not be worth the effort depending on the details of the implementation of the new database and how things will get glued together. Anyway, it would be great to get the option to collapse the two lines which each Japanese entry gets in the interface down into one with the furigana reading being optional.
That way, people with browsers or plugins that parse ruby markup “correctly” could then simplify things a little bit. At the same time, this may well complicate the rendering a fair bit (the sentence would have ruby, but once clicked, the text input element would have the plain text).
Noted.
1st suggestion can be done some time "soon".
2nd suggestion... not so soon...
I'm not happy with hiding the sentences totally: I think they should be visible if one is editing just one frase (like her http://tatoeba.org/deu/sentences/show/), but hidden if you are loading more sentences.
Maybe we could make it like facebook: In facebook theres sometimes this "See all 70 comments" and I think we should use "see 12 more translations in other languages"! I think it would be unfair and not very multilingual to just block the other languages like with a spam-filter.
Ideally yes, there should be a link to display all translations. It's already something I had in mind. Just not enough time to implement it :)
Personally I also felt something was "missing" when I implemented the feature and restricted my languages to the ones I know. I was kind of hesitating on whether to deploy it or not but I believe the feature as it is can already be useful for some people, so I decided to deploy it even if it's not perfect. In the end it still remains an option, which you can tune at any time according to your mood.
Typically, if you're in an "exploration" mood, you'll want to turn off the option and have all the translations displayed.
But if you're in a "contribution" mood where you mostly want to translate or check sentences or add new sentences, then having all the extra translations, that you don't really need to care about, can be distracting.
These are excellent additions, thanks a lot! =)
oui, bravo, ça va faciliter beaucoup de choses.
Un effet de bord un peu ennuyeux des préférences de langues:
Si on traduit depuis une liste, et que l'on laisse la langue de traduction être déterminée automatiquement, parfois la langue n'est pas déterminée (le drapeau est alors un '?') mais on ne s'en aperçoit pas forcément tout de suite.
Si parallèlement on a mis en place des préférences de code de langues, alors si on clique sur la phrase qu'on vient de traduire pour, par exemple, comparer sa traduction aux autres langues, on ne voit plus sa propre traduction puisque son code langue inexistant ne se trouve pas dans les préférences de codes langues, ce qui peut laisser perplexe et être la cause qu'on recrée la traduction en pensant qu'elle n'a pas bien été enregistrée, ce qui est une nouvelle source de création de doublons...
Je suggère que les phrases dont le code langue n'a pas été déterminé soient donc systématiquement sélectionnées avec celles pour lesquelles on a paramétré les codes langues, de façon à permettre tout de même leur visualisation dans ce cas...
It would be great to be able to trnaslate text on the interface just by clicking on it. (I know this might sond like a dream, but maybe its possible)
I dont know how launchpad actually works, but maybe some "translation-key" could be integrated into the html-classes so that a javascript somewhere on the bottom of the page could make these texts clickable when aktivated. Then if you are logged-in to launchpad the Javascript would post the sentence to launchpad.
Thereby one would see the context of the word or sentence and be able to translate it properly.
This in my point of view be valuable also for other projects and i have already asked for help about this also on launchpad.
This should be possible with some kind of pseudo-locale. You just take the eng-locale and attach a link to the corresponding Launchpad entry at the end of each string.
I just translated a sentence I already had translated and created a duplicate ( http://tatoeba.org/deu/sentences/show/841632 ). Is it somehow possible to delete one's own sentences? If not: It should be! At least for a certain amount of time and as long as nobody else made further translations of your sentence.
Could an admin delete the duplicate?
Thanks @CK
Call me curious, but...
How many professional translators (who are paid for their translating) are there on this website? It might be good to have a directory of such people (if they're willing to be included, of course) so as to know whose opinion to refer to on questionable matters, difficult translations, etc...
Professional translators consider this as unfair competition. Soon, we'll see luddites sabotaging the sentences...
But there are a few here, I think. Let me rephrase to "professional translators who don't see TTB as unfair competition".
And talking about "professionals", the other day, I was discussing with a professional interpreter from the European Commission. She translates from French, Italian, Spanish, and Romanian into Portugese. I asked her if she was specialised in any field and she admitted that none of her colleagues were, so they have to translate, say, one day for public accountancy, and the next day for legislation applicable to chemicals. She was just telling me that she knew nothing about accounting whatsoever, even in her netive language. She interpreted accountancy meetings though...
Also, the other day, I went to listen to a speech by Joshka Fisher. He was speaking in German and, out of curiosity, I picked the audio to listen to the English translation. I swear that half of what he was saying was either not translated or betrayed...It was just appalling. I suppose all speeches at the EU parliament or other international institutions are just completely misunderstood.
So tell me about professionals...Translation is just a massive misunderstanding.
When it comes to languages, proficiency is just a question of experience, whether "professional" or not, and it's never enough...
Definition of "professionalism" may vary, too. From a narrow sense (a person who makes their living out of translating) to quite a broad one (a person who sometimes translates something for money, among other activities). In the broad sense, count me in. And TTB is not a competition whatsoever, translators seldom get hired to translate one sentence - or even twenty unrelated ones...
I think sentences tagged "@Needs Native Check" ought to automatically have a little warning icon so that people who search the database can see that they are dubious at a glance.
I second that!
Not if these tags are abusively applied...
Feature Suggestion:
Inheritable Tags:
While translating I see that some sentences are tagged topic-related tags which will be applicable to all translations of the said sentences. So, what I suggest is to have some tags (ones about topic e.g death, or about writer...) inheritable so when translating a sentence with an inheritable tag, the translated sentence will inherit the tag too.
Ex: If there is sentence X, tagged with tag Y, and tag Y is inheritable, then translations A and B and C of sentence X will all have tag Y.
What do you think?
Over chains of translations, the tags may no longer be appropriate. Consider:
“He was visited by the Grim Reaper.”
“Maðurinn með ljáinn sótti hann heim.”
“The man with the scythe paid him a visit.”
It could be restricted to direct translations only, and anyway, tags can be removed any time.
That would cripple the feature and make it super annoying since sometimes tags were carried over and sometimes not. There is value in simplicity.
Oh, sorry. Now, that I thought about it more, I think I see what you mean, I didn't think about it that way. It would really be problematic.
So, I think another way to have is to have the tags of the 'original' sentence suggested to me, in some color, and I can choose the right tags.
Sorry for not understanding you before.
No problem. This has been brought up before. Tools to manage tags would be great, but we're not even sure how to best use the tags, yet. As you mentioned, only some tags would apply to all linked sentences (those referring to the content of the sentence, rather than the language employed).
CK and I have been doing some work on organising these (see the link to CK's page from the tags page). Ideas are welcome and be sure to watch the wall for the (occasional) discussions on tags.
Yes, i have suggested similar features and i back your idea, though it has to be discussed about the exact way it should work.
Here i ve already mentioned what you call "inheritable tag" and i wanted them to be only suggestions with links to be easier and quicker added.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/show_message/4636
Another suggestion i made was about the content of the sentence: if analysed one could also suggest tags.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/sho...9#message_4879
Of course i appreciate that you also bring up this idea and we can further discuss it here.
Of course, by 'me' in '...suggested to me' I meant the sentence owner.
I don't really see the confusing.
Let me tell you how I see it: I see a sentence that has a tag. I translate that sentence. my translation automatically gets that tag, this is, of course, supposing the tag is topical not grammatical, so a tag: 'weather' is inherited, but 'said by male' is not.
I've started to work on a greasemonkey script that should do the following, but i havent managed to get it working yet:
My idea would be that the tags that are on the right should be somehow clickable (or another link that says "add 'holiday'-tag to other sentences" for example).
Then when you click it symbols (or a link that says "add 'holiday'-tag to this sentence") should appear next to each translation sentence.
Then when clicking one of these links there should be a throbber (the thing which turns around to tell you it's loading) and when finished a "okay"-sign should appear.
Until now i have managed most of the ideas above using a greasemonkey script based on jquery (which also tatoeba uses), but i havent managed to really add the tags yet, because the POST function doesnt seem to work, for one or the other reason. Maybe someone here is familiar with jquery and could help me? Or we just wait for the admins to implement it.I hope you could understand my idea - if not i will illustrate it with images.
I guess this would be a partial solution: One would NOT be able to GET the tags from the linked sentences but one WOULD at least be able to GIVE them the tags the sentence one is looking at already has one step easier. The other way round, i guess, would need to be a database query, which we cannot implement this fast.