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While tatoeba does have an "obscene" tag, it can only be used manually. Because tatoeba continues to be a great project for learning websites, it is routinely recommended to under age teens all over the world as a great learning resource. Even when not searching for obscene sentences directly (by using that kind of vocabulary), those sentences will come up on any number of sites. This may include random sentences, recent activities, sentence requests, not translated sentences etc. All of those sites will (involuntarily) expose people to content they are often either not willing to see, which disgusts them or could even be detrimental to their development.
I'm not talking about just censoring the sheer usage of such vocabulary, but giving people a choice.
You can find all sentences tagged with as obscene here: https://tatoeba.org/eng/tags/sh..._with_tag/3301
I believe myself to be quite tolerant, however this particular sentence made me bring up that proposal:
https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2994360
Seeing that tatoeba does currently not feature a mechanism, I felt compelled to think of a solution. However, I started to contribute to tatoeba quite recently. In particular, I don't have a solid understanding of the extent of this phenomenon. Personally, I just ran into that problem twice, which does not constitute a magnitude worth talking about. Just now (after having conceived a technical proposal) I was told by a senior member that those sentences are a rarity on tatoeba.
How often did you run into that kind of sentence? How do you think about that? Is that worth tackling at all?
What's "obscene" about this sentence that is featured in this tag list ?!?
https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/1188067
I defy you and anybody else to come up with a sensible universal definition of what obscenity is.
In some countries, seeing women's hair is obscene when chopping off criminals' hands or stoning lovers to death is not. To me, it is precisely the contrary that is obscene.
Any censorship based on a definition of obscenity is just a cultural dictatorship and I will fight against it with my last energy and I don't care a fig whether Google does it or not. Who the hell is in charge of that definition at Google ?? What are their credentials in matters of obscenity ? What cultural biases do they have ?
Well first, as sacredceltic said in his vigorous way of his own, a problem is to define obscenity. A problem that is way more to difficult on a multi-cultural / country / language platform that is Tatoeba. One could argue that we could define a tag for each language because most of native people would know how to identify such sentences. A counter-argument will be to set the limit between obscenity and vulgar, for example. The sentence sacredceltic took as example is a good example of that. Is the sentence obscene or vulgar (gross, salacious, whatever synonym one could find)?
As you said, I think this phenomenon is too much a rarity to be considered a nuisance. Maybe the people really worried about that could display a warning like some people here display a warning that some sentences are wrong translations or don't sound natural.
Let's give it another name: offending native speakers. Of course sensitivity varies greatly between individuals, but native speakers tend to have a clear notion of what can be said without offending most people. I can very clearly picture the face of a native speaker hearing the sentence above (German version, very first post). This face shows either disbelief or disgust. You will always find someone who is fine with that, but most people won't.
This overlaps largely with the idea Aiji brought forth. It's probably less important if something is obscene or just vulgar; you will normally offend people (if "offend" sounds too strong for you: people do mind). Again, native speakers know where to draw the line.
A warning is probably a good choice - if you are not really into tatoeba, you don't even know about tags. I remember an exchange student using a really hardcore expression. This term is almost identical to terms which are used regularly, but carries unproportionally much weight. There is no way for a non-native speaker to tell just from the translation or its components.
@sacredceltic: All the cultures I know of do have a notion of obscenity, the scope being different. I suppose the remainder does, too. So if you oppose any and all flagging, I don't really see who you are fighting for. (no offense!)
In my opinion, you always have to strike a balance between extremes; neither complete freedom nor complete restriction floats your boat.
... everybody I talked to so far agreed upon the rarity of this phenomenon. I just wanted to comment on your opnions (thank you for sharing them!) - I don't think there's a need for such a feature.
The Guidelines http://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/arti...ow/guidelines# say:
Do not submit sentences that will antagonize contributors or readers.
In my opinion, this kind of sentences is OK, if they aren't regarding to any real person. Sure, they must go with proper tags. All those words are a part of the language, and learners should have a choice to learn them or not. I think there must be an option in the search "include obscene language", and by default it must be disabled. If a user want to learn such words and expressions, they would enable the option (confirming then they're adult before).
Can anyone make a request for this?
Let’s say you added a feature to hide and show the obscene language (and I really wonder how one will decide neutrally what is obscene or not for almost all languages on Tatoeba) and then someone will come up with the idea of hiding religious sentences, or an extreme nationalist with the idea of hiding a specific country name in sentences.
What’s good or bad, moral or immoral, legit or illegit, we don’t have a right to decide for other people. A small note like ‘’This website may contain some terms that some people may find offensive.’’ can be added to ‘’What is Tatoeba’’ page. But trying to censor a dictionary or even adding an optional feature to censor a dictionary is not something acceptable.
The tongue has no bones and what is grammatically correct is a must-have for a project whose only aim is language teaching/learning. A native’s face ‘may’ show either disbelief or disgust but that one sentence can be very useful to a learner in a grammatical or morphological way.
We could talk about censoring if we were politicians but no. Thus, I, too, am against this idea and I vote ‘no’ as one of the longtime members of this project.
Yes, many moral values are relative and could be different from culture to culture. But (almost?) every language have a list of obscene words, and using of those words in public discussions are prohibited or limitated. Also there are phrases, which describe sexual activities, and many people find them unwanted to see for themselves or at least for their children. If a newcomer opens Tatoeba and sees a phrase like the one, which started the discussion, it's very likely he or she won't continue to use the site. And it could be even worse if the newcomer is a child and their parents decide to look, what he or she studies, and just block the site after such a phrase.
My idea is very simple: hiding by default sentences with tags for "obscene language" and "sex". The first list is sentences with "prohibited" words (which are normally "beeped"), and the second list are phrases which could be hardly used in any other situation, than describing sexual relationships or activities. Regarding the tag "religion", I understand it might be sensitive topic, too, but I have no idea how to handle with it. I believe we should solve problems when they appears :)
I have no idea why you describe the idea as a "censorship" as long as there is always a capability to show the hidden sentences.
‘’I have no idea why you describe the idea as a "censorship" as long as there is always a capability to show the hidden sentences.’’
Because that idea is only for hiding "obscene language" and "sex" as you wrote. That feature will only work as a profanity filter, not as a filter for ‘personally unwanted words’ in a sentence.
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Let’s look at Wikipedia. The full title is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. And it’s indeed free in terms of both liberty and being free of charge. You can find almost all sexual articles there with real images. And they are not censored. It has no feature like ‘’click to show the image’’ or so. Even conservative governments don’t ban the website because its only aim is to educate. Tatoeba’s shouldn’t be different as well.
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‘’I believe we should solve problems when they appears.’’
Instead, we can simply add or not add features which will not make other problems appear in the future.
There was an attempt to ban Wikipedia in Russia, for the article, which told how to make some drug. The government asked to delete the illegal page, but Wikipedians refused to do. Finally the government didn't ban the whole Wikipedia, and I don't remember is the illegal page was banned or deleted or not.
Anyway, we both expressed our opinions on the issue, let's wait what another people could say.