[not needed anymore- removed by CK]

AWESOME!!! THANK YOOOUUUU!!!

It's pretty good ^^ I'll add the link to your tutorial in the FAQ, if you're okay with that.

About my 'dual' tag. I think it's useful, because it marks sentences where subject is used in the dual number. Although it's not a widespread feature of world's languages, there are still certain languages which use it. I use it for Old Estern Slavic, and you know better than me that it is used in Icelandic. It is also mandatory in the standard Arabic and in Slovene. So I think we should keep this tag.

I've sent the user a message asking them to respond to the comments raised on the sentences. If nothing happens, we can safely delete these soon.

I think that linking the sentences with the same language is the correct answer. Another argument in favour of linking phrases of the same language would be the (future) task of finding the duplicate and similar phrases, because there definitely will be a numerous pairs of a little bit different punctuation, or different wording of the same proverb etc.

When the tags on the links are available, it would be much more flexible, as one would be able to specify not only "equivalent" links, but also "similar", "related to", "not equal to" and other kinds of links.
But while the tags on the links are impossible, I think it is the correct solution to use existing links to connect reworded phrases, even in the same language.

Just add a new sentence and link to it in a comment.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm okay with linking the examples you mentioned:
Yesterday I went to school. = I went to school yesterday.
I like to read. = I like reading.

I'm not too sure about linking modern sentences to archaic sentences though, or natural to unnatural-sounding sentences. When I think about it, it seems that linking sentences is not just about meaning but also about the effect generated by the sentence. You need to ask yourself "If I said this other sentence to a native speaker, would it have the same effect as the original sentence?"

When you say "I like to read", it pretty much has the same effect as "I like reading", so it can be linked safely.

But when you say "'Sup man?", it definitely doesn't have the same effect as "How are you, sir?".
When you speak like Yoda it doesn't have the same effect as when you speak with more commonly accepted grammar.
And technically, "You look fantastic" could have the same meaning as "You look awful" if the former statement was sarcastic.

In the end it's up to the contributors to decide if two sentences are close enough to be linked or not, but it would make things confusing if we opted to link only based on meaning.

Mi tute samopinias kun vi.

How about this:

"However, if you are not translating into your native language (which you can, but it is not encouraged), you are forgiven for not writing native-like sentences. It's a collaborative project after all, and someday (hopefully) a native speaker will come across your contribution and see if it sounds right to them or not."

?


I'm not sure it will change much though, because people who translate a lot into a foreign language and make a lot of mistakes are most likely people who haven't read the contributor's guide =/

I personally don't think the problem comes from translating into a foreign language. It's first of all a problem of skills and of how much people care. Some people translate very poorly even into their own language. That's because they don't have the skills, or they are not putting enough efforts, or they are not rigorous enough. On the other hand, some people contribute excellent translations into languages they've learned for only a few years (perhaps even a few months). That's because they are good at languages, and they care, and they take the time to make sure they provide good contributions.

So nativity is not really the main issue in my opinion. The real issues would be:

1) The notifications. Because being notified of your mistakes is really crucial, and the only way to be notified quickly and efficiently so far is through email. But sometimes users provide a non-working email, or an email they don't check often, or the notification goes in their spam, or the notification system is broken. It can be very frustrating for those who suggested corrections, to feel like the owner doesn't care correcting his mistakes.

2) The "reward". People can see how many sentences there are in each language, people can see how many new sentences are added each day. So there's a "reward" for quantity... but nothing for quality. We need to display the number of orphan sentences left, we need to display the number of sentences corrected each day.

3) The permissions. We need to give users permissions more progressively. For instance, at the beginning, a user would only be able to comment sentences, to point out mistakes and suggest corrections. Once they have successfully suggested corrections for 10 sentences in a certain language, they will be allowed to translate sentences into that language.

I think the main attraction to tatoeba right now is the potential for learning. If we start stopping users from adding sentences in languages they don't fully master, we'll be taking away an integral part of why some people are here...for example qahwa has added almost 170 sentences in arabic and I've corrected a good portion of them (we've got some sort of lang exchange going)...if ppl like her are not allowed to add sentences, I'm afraid they're just gonna leave (and we really need [japanese] natives!)

but I generally agree...moderators should at least be able to mass-tag a user's sentences in a certain language with NNC

I'm personally for people only translating between sentences they are proficient in. If people want to integrate this into their language learning by teaming up with others who check their sentences, then that's fine.

The emphasis should, however, be on accurate sentences. I don't think that will drive users away, but I base that mostly on the highly dubious assumption that everyone thinks like me.

I use Tatoeba to look up sentences in a language I'm learning, but contribute in languages that I'm proficient in. Most of my contributions are in Icelandic which I would like to support to have a good presence here, for the benefit of other language learners; despite the fact that it won't benefit me directly.

But I don't think I'm alone in thinking that way. I think there is plenty of empirical data that indicates people are not only willing to contribute, but actively interested in contributing, to projects that benefit a larger group. So, no; I don't think we need to lure people in by allowing them to post half-baked sentences in the belief that someone will catch their mistakes.

PS. It should be mentioned that such a collaborative feedback service already exists: lang-8.com. Furthermore, it would be easy to set up a second site through the API with a dedicated learning environment centred around translating sentences for Tatoeba.