I'm glad to see you are doing that.
In my opinion, as a native, you have all the right, and you should be encouraged to do it, specially since they have no owner (apparently).
But whenever I've corrected a few on my own, I've been confronted with who-knows-what self imposed rules, status quo, immaculate sentences conception or whatever, finally leading to "you don't correct sentences!".

But let's just wait to see what others have to say about it.

In any language you can find sentences which were written by non-native users or in a haste and maybe they aren't wrong, but they are not examples of a proper use of language nonetheless. In my opinion, these have to undergo correction eventually, by all means.

Personally, I think that sentences on Tatoeba should be as natural as possible. First and foremost, this concerns newly added sentences, not translations. Saying that I understand that in many cases a sentence taken out of context may sound unnatural, weird, ambiguous, etc., so I think we should encourage the contributors to avoid adding such sentences or, at least, to provide usage examples whenever it's necessary.
As for the translations, I think that a good translation should meet at least the following criteria: it should be grammatical, natural, has the same meaning and/or the same effect. Word-for-word translations often have nothing to do with those criteria and, thus, should be avoided unless we want to illustrate some peculiar property of the original sentence. In this case a "good" translation should be added along with the literal one and the latter should be marked with an appropriate tag(s) (i.e., "literal translation", "unnatural", etc.).
The biggest problem is what to consider "natural". Sometimes even native speakers have polar points of view on the same sentence. This means that it's highly desirable to raise a discussion whenever we bump into a doubtful sentence. At least, corrections shouldn't be made without notice and explanation.
Thus, I think that:
- ungrammatical sentences should be corrected unconditionally;
- unnatural sentences should be corrected unless a context or usage example that makes it sound natural could be found. "Unnaturalness" should be explained by a proficient/native speaker.
- if the sentence sounds unnatural due to literal translation made on some purpose, the reason should be explained and the natural translation added along with the literal one.

Whatever will be decided, you can always at least leave a comment saying that you feel sentence is unnatural. This, while currently not very visible, will already add precious information to the corpus.

Let me narrow down the point: how to deal with "orphan" unnatural sentences.

There are 124,005 orphan sentences in Japanese now. In my rough estimation, about 20% of them are worth adopting, while the others are somewhat unnatural or unattractive: many of them are written in the style of bad translators. This means that about the half of Japanese sentences in Tatoeba are unsatisfactory from the point of view of a native speaker. Can you imagine how funny this site looks to us? I showed this site to some of my friends and all of them laughed a lot to see weird Japanese sentences here and there. I'm pretty sure that the Japanese sentences have the worst quality of all the languages in Tatoeba. This is why I was trying to modify the bad sentences rather than to leave it alone and add a new one.

Since there are so many of them, Dima's suggestion of commenting on each of them simply sounds unrealistic. We could do that, but then it'll take hundreds of years to settle all of them. And now I'm beginning to doubt whether we need to take care of those orphan sentences in the first place. Having corrected a few sentences, I am much convinced that it's far easier to make a good sentence by myself than to try to make a bad one better. What do we have all those for then?

I'm not insisting on deleting orphan sentences, though. We Japanese contributors can easily increase the number of reliable sentences by adopting good sentences that have remained unowned. What I really wish is to have them invisible to most of the users unless they want to see them. I'm pretty sure that almost all the users don't want to see many sentences that they don't know if they can trust or not. If this is done, then we can add new sentences without being concerned about the already existing orphan ones, and Tatoeba would look much more sensible, and it would be a much better place especially for those who are interested in Japanese and English.

I think there is no point in keeping in the corpus until the end of time sentences that are technically, i.e. in some grammatical sense, correct, but yet awkward and unnatural and no good example sentences at all. By 'unnatural' I do not mean 'non-colloquial', 'literary' or 'old-fashioned' (I do have an appreciation for such sentences), but 'not breathing the spirit of the language in any way'.

Judging what is natural and what is not, what is acceptable and what is not, is not always easy, but you seem very competent, and I would trust you with it. Sentences laughed at by native speakers certainly need correction. If you see to that, you have my support.

I think what Trang was more concerned about when she set up those rules, was that sentences that one native thinks are just fine while the other doesn't, should not be changed even if the other gets the chance to do it. Instead, he should add variant sentences that he is comfortable with, and everyone is satisfied. That is obviously not the case here.

Undoubtedly, grammar and spelling mistakes are the easiest to correct, but correct grammar alone does not make a correct sentence. If several natives agree that a sentence is unnatural, and none disagrees, they should have the right to change it. If you are not certain or need confirmation, you could ask at least one other Japanese contributor, and then, if he or she consents, 'do it', as it were.

To really be on the safe side, you could suggest the change in a comment, tag the sentence with '@change' and then after two weeks, if no one has disagreed by then, change it in good conscience.

Please ask Sysko to make you an advanced contributor. ☺

The idea Alex Marcelo had with that 'playground', if I got him right, was not to put there all unowned sentences that no native feels comfortable to adopt, but to give non-natives a place where they can contribute their own sentences that would then be transferred to the 'trusted area' of Tatoeba after they have been checked, but that may very well never be implemented, although it's a good idea.

By the way, I think that all unowned sentences should be considered non-native sentences and thus be corrected by a native and moved to the 'trusted area' of Tatoeba by putting their names on them upon correction.

sharptoothed wrote:
Sometimes even native speakers have polar points of view on the same sentence.
--

Pfirsichbaeumchen wrote:
…sentences that one native thinks are just fine while the other doesn't, should not be changed even if the other gets the chance to do it. Instead, he should add variant sentences that he is comfortable with, and everyone is satisfied. That is obviously not the case here.
--

After using Tatoeba Project corpus for three years, I've joined as a contributor. What initially drew my interest to Tatoeba? The reliably vast number of blatant errors. And also the comments I would read about how awful the example sentences were, especially the romaji. While I didn't agree with the tone of these comments, I did acknowledge that these errors are substantial to new learners who are using apps or websites that relate to Tatoeba Project. I kept the notion of joining the project in mind and waited for a goal / project ***for myself as a learner*** to surface. It has surfaced and now I'm here initially using Japanese proverbs to see what sort of errors the MeCab analyzer makes. I've read your comments that the furigana engine will be improved. I'm not the sort of person to suspend my inquiry while I await results from the unknown.

I essentially agree with what tommy_san has written. Here's my paraphrasing:
i) the errors are staggeringly numerous
ii) the errors are embarrassingly laughable
iii) orphaned sentences should be demoted (made invisible / less accessible / more concave)

I'm new here and I'm slowly reading through articles and conversations. Thank you to everyone who has drawn my attention to pertinent topics.

Is there a system for weighting orphaned sentences? If after an active adoption cycle, orphaned sentences could be demoted into invisibility, then contributors of all levels could gradually adopt and improve some of these orphaned sentences, while other sentences drift closer over time to total deletion. That's how language works in our own world, no?

Some of you may have thought I was exaggerating when I wrote only 20% of the orphan Japanese sentences are worth adopting. Now I try to show you how they seem to me.

I looked at the first ten orphan sentences that the site randomly showed me.

Among the ten, one was a very good sentence, so I adopted it.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/203334

Three of them were not very bad, but different from what I'd write.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2261063
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/267961
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/47391

Four of them looked bad. At least, I would bitterly oppose if someone was going to use these sentences in a Japanese textbook, for example. The last one is especially a good example of a bad Japanese.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2075864
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/295733
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/1554289
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/25040

(I wrote comments in English for these seven sentences above. You can read them on the pages of original Japanese sentences.)

Two of them I simply ignored. They don't sound natural and each of them is only linked to an orphan English sentence. I decided they're not worth working on.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/113480
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/99776

This is only a few examples, but I hope I could give you some idea about what kind of sentences you have been shamelessly displaying for such a long time. (I really want to hear what other Japanese think about these sentences.)

You might think, "these sentences are written by Japanese students; if their English can be wrong, their Japanese can't be wrong". This assumption is, however, totally mistaken. Since English and Japanese are very different languages, it's very difficult for most Japanese to make natural-sounding Japanese sentences equivalent to English ones. So when they're told to translate English into Japanese, they produce sentences far removed from everyday speech. I believe these awkward Japanese sentences are heard in almost every English class in Japan. These sentences are understandable enough for us and are sometimes very helpful to explain how English works. But they're never the kind of Japanese that any serious learner should read. They often give the wrong impression that Japanese is closer to European languages than it really is. (I suppose thise German sentence http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/331880 is similar to the case I'm talking about.)

Of course I myself once was (and sometimes still am) one of them. I have no intention of insisting I'm flawless. Some people must think some of my sentences sound unnatural. Some must be able to think up better translations. But I'm trying really hard to avoid that kind of clumsiness, and I believe that I---and bunbuku-san and some other Japanese here---can think up much better sentences than most of the orphan ones.

By the way, some of you must be annoyed because I put links to the pages of English sentences. You can't tell there which Japanese sentence is unowned and which one is mine, until you visit the individual pages. That's exactly what annoys me the most. Owned and unowned sentences look completely equal. This makes Tatoeba too inconvenient---almost useless---for the learners of Japanese, I suppose.

I agree that the users must be able to choose whether they want to see the orphan sentences or not, and that these must be set invisible by default. That could also surely prevent us from missing potential competent Japanese contributors.

Personally I'm opposed to deleting them completely. They can be sometimes useful for us. If Tatoeba is going to have more than one databases soon, then you can just put them all into the database of the lowest rank. They will do you no harm as long as you don't see them.

Concerning the "unnatural" tag, I have to say I'm very reluctant with it. It's a hard job and takes a lot of time to judge if a sentence is acceptable or not. I'm sure some people must think that there's nothing wrong with some of the four sentences that I called "bad" above. If I have time for such a distinction, I'd love to spend that time to make good sentences.

19 hours ago
Is there a system for weighting orphaned sentences? If after an active adoption cycle, orphaned sentences could be demoted into invisibility, then contributors of all levels could gradually adopt and improve some of these orphaned sentences, while other sentences drift closer over time to total deletion. That's how language works in our own world, no?

--
sharptoothed wrote:
any idea is doomed to fail unless it has supporters. I'm sure that everyone here who, somehow or other, concerns about Japanese part of Tatoeba would do everything within his/her powers to help. And I hope, more native Japanese speakers will join us or all efforts will be wasted.
--

I agree with this sentiment. I'd be glad to help, with what resources I possess.

>sharptoothed wrote:
I'm sure that everyone here who, somehow or other, concerns about Japanese part of Tatoeba would do everything within his/her powers to help.

I'm a native Japanese speaker and concern about situations of Japanese sentenses in Tatoeba, like Tommy-san.

I strongly support his estimation that only less than half orphan Japanese sentenses are worth adopting.
I'll also try evaluating that 'ten random orphans' he presented at message_15743 again.

In my feeling:

One of them has no preoblem.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/203334

Five of them is unnatural in most cases, but in rare cases these might be natural.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2261063
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/267961
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/47391
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/295733
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/99776
(Tommy-san rated 295733 and 99776 as bad)

Four of them is bad.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2075864
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/1554289
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/25040
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/113480

If we found one unnatural orphan out of ten random sentenses, we would feel like to grasp at every unnatural orphan and try to correct it. But in practice there are lot more unnatural sentenses than we could deal with!
At present, when I correct unnatural sentenses or add new ones, I get often anxious.
It is because there are almost no credible systems or guidelines to deal with that vast numbers of orphans and each contributer works in our own way.
I think some other contributers feel unease, too.
If so, I suppose that the absense of public institutions (i.e. clear guideline, public work space, efficient tools) is discouraging Japanese speekers from pioneering the fronteer of orphan sentenses.

I wish it soon gets easier for shy Japanese speakers to contribute to Tatoeba.