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blay_paul blay_paul April 2, 2010 April 2, 2010 at 9:53:28 AM UTC link Permalink

Beware 'back-translation'!

This is a common problem in Tatoeba, because it is often unclear which sentence is the original and which is a translation. (Particularly for the Japanese / English pairs).

Here's a simple example:

Original Japanese
A) ペン借りていい?

Translated English
B) Can I borrow your pen?

Somebody then sees that 'your' is not present in the Japanese and 'corrects' it.

あなたのペン借りていい?

Unfortunately this is now an unnatural sounding sentence. Even if it did sound natural, doing this for every occurrence of 'your' would give leave the collection with far more uses of あなたの than you would normally find used in Japanese.

The same thing applies where the English is original. 'the' has no direct equivalent in Japanese so その (that) is often used in the Japanese translation of English. If you go back and change uses of 'the' in English sentences to 'that' you are probably needlessly altering the original version.

*******

@Trang : Maybe you could put something like that in your blog?

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JimBreen JimBreen April 4, 2010 April 4, 2010 at 10:08:57 AM UTC link Permalink

This is very sound advice.

TRANG TRANG April 4, 2010 April 4, 2010 at 4:46:57 PM UTC link Permalink

I have reformulated rule #5, previously "Do not change the meaning of a sentence", and now "Do not edit a sentence if, by itself, it is correct".

The content has also been readapted to include the problem you are mentioning.

http://blog.tatoeba.org/2010/02...eba.html#rule5

CK CK June 4, 2010, edited October 25, 2019 June 4, 2010 at 6:05:24 AM UTC, edited October 25, 2019 at 8:10:22 AM UTC link Permalink

[not needed anymore- removed by CK]

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blay_paul blay_paul June 4, 2010 June 4, 2010 at 8:58:17 AM UTC link Permalink

The そのs aren't so much unnatural as the 'thats' that originate going the other direction (or when someone 'back-translates'). In any case I think we're best just persuading people not to over-do it when adding new sentences.

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JimBreen JimBreen June 4, 2010 June 4, 2010 at 9:22:51 AM UTC link Permalink

I wouldn't mind seeing some of the あなたのs and 私のs removed (it won't change the meanings and the the other languages wont be affected.) Just so long as you remove them from the indices at the same time.

I removed some when I was custodian of the JE pairs many years ago, but I got bored by it. I wish now I had done more of them.