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xtofu80 xtofu80 June 7, 2010 June 7, 2010 at 3:04:50 PM UTC link Permalink

A general remark: Given the huge amount of Japanese data, I think we need more Japanese contributors to help us with the correction and to keep the Japanese sentences more consistent. Talking to my Japanese language partner recently, I came to the conclusion that with its current features, tatoeba is rather unattractive for Japanese natives who want to learn another language, because most sentences are already translated to Japanese. For example, what would be the benefit for my partner who learns German?

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blay_paul blay_paul June 7, 2010 June 7, 2010 at 3:28:23 PM UTC link Permalink

There are probably more sentences in German that aren't translated into Japanese than you realize.

What you can do is ask Trang or Sysko to add a list
"ger->jpn translations needed"

They can filter the data to see exactly what sentences in German aren't linked to a sentence in Japanese.

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xtofu80 xtofu80 June 7, 2010 June 7, 2010 at 4:14:12 PM UTC link Permalink

Dear Trang, dear Sysko:
Would it be possible to do this on the contribution webpage, e.g. when one selects "ger->jpn",to show example sentences in German which have no Japanese equivalent, or is this to heavy a burden for the database? As the current system shows only 15 sentences, maybe this might also reduce the complexity of the search.

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blay_paul blay_paul June 7, 2010 June 7, 2010 at 4:44:09 PM UTC link Permalink

I've done some checking and there are 9570 German sentences that are not translated into Japanese. Starting with 123 and ending with 399357.

I can send you them in an email if you want.

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xtofu80 xtofu80 June 7, 2010 June 7, 2010 at 8:21:01 PM UTC link Permalink

Yes, please do so, though I think it would be preferable to have a list or even a search function for such sentences.

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sysko sysko July 19, 2010 July 19, 2010 at 12:06:22 PM UTC link Permalink

just to say it's now possible to view all "german sentences not translated in japanese" here http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentence...pn/indifferent (it will display indirect translations in Japanese, as this way it can be a fine way to view sentences than can be linked)

TRANG TRANG June 7, 2010 June 7, 2010 at 8:36:10 PM UTC link Permalink

It's in our plans :)
...and has been for a long long time. But to be honest, I cannot tell you for sure when we can implement it. Perhaps in two weeks, perhaps in one month, perhaps in two months.

In the meantime, I can generate a list of German sentences that have no *direct* translation in Japanese. Most of them will have an indirect translation though.

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saeb saeb June 8, 2010 June 8, 2010 at 12:17:10 AM UTC link Permalink

...perhaps in two years :P

TRANG TRANG June 7, 2010 June 7, 2010 at 8:34:22 PM UTC link Permalink

Here are a few things...


1) If your partner has a good level in German, he/she can practice translating from Japanese into German, and you would be checking his/her sentences.

Note that you can view someone's sentences by going to their profile, then clicking on "See this user's contribution" (below the link to send a private message). Then on the user's contributions page, you go to "See all" next to "Latest sentences" (yea it's a bit complicated, but we'll be improve the profile someday). And you can select "German" to only keep German sentences.


2) Your partner can enter in Tatoeba Japanese sentences that he/she would like to know how to say in German, and you can try to translate his/her sentences. It would be good of course to search first if the sentence doesn't already exist.

Basically, you could be chatting together and, as the conversation goes, your partner could add Japanese sentences he/she can't figure out how to say in German. Your partner would then send you the link to the sentence once it's added, and you would translate right after that. This is pretty much what most tandems do anyway, when they chat together "How do you say...?" But instead of keeping that knowledge in your private chat logs, you can share it with the rest of the world :)

It would be a good idea to also make a list out of it, so that you can keep track of the various sentences you learned.
sysko had made such a list: http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences_lists/show/73/eng
It resulted from him and Dorenda chatting together in IRC.


3) You partner can practice translating from German to Japanese, while also contributing. Because as I said, most of the German sentences do not have a DIRECT translation in Japanese, but they do have an INDIRECT translation. So your partner could take on the task to link them.

But not just by reading and saying "okay, those translations match". I can create a deu->jpn list for him/her. She would then look at the German sentences from the list, and try to think of what the translation is. Then he/she can click on the sentence to view its details, and most of the time there should be an indirect Japanese translation. If that indirect translation matches what he/she thought of, they he/she can link the two sentences.

The only problem with this is that not everyone can link or unlink sentences yet. Only "trusted users" can (and even then, they can't link or unlink anything). The link/unlink feature requires you to understand very well the structure of Tatoeba, so it's not available to everyone because it's going to be confusing to new users more than it's going to be useful.
But I hope to make the link/unlink feature available to everyone through the concept I just explained.


So those are the ideas I have in mind. There are certainly more creative ones, but I'd have to think harder ^^