You can always request new languages
https://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/art...nguage-request

Thanks a lot, @gillux, @frpzzd, and @Thadh!

It's both helpful and interesting to be able to see the most recent contributors in a given language, with a special symbol for those who have been active in the last week. I'm also glad the bug preventing some sentences with audio from being edited has been fixed.

I think this functionality exists, but only via email, and you have to make sure you have email notifications turned on in your account settings. I, for one, get an email whenever someone tags me in a wall post or comment.

In Italian, I use both the loan word ("Cookie") and the literal translation ("Biscotto")

First, a little background. Tatoeba itself does not have any notion of "wildcards". One particular contributor writes sentences that make use of a single human male name, a single human female name, a single surname, a single pet name, even a single day of the week, time of day, country name, address, and on and on. He chose that practice, and those names, without regard for any of the following:

- how well the names can be translated into other languages
- whether use of those "wildcards" would drive out use of other possible names, times, and so on

Since that contributor is very prolific, and writes in English (the most translated language and also the one with the most sentences), the effects have propagated through the entire corpus, probably mostly because people have translated those sentences, and to a smaller degree because people have followed his example when writing new sentences.

You have various choices, which are not mutually exclusive:
- Skip these sentences when translating.
- Write your own Chinese sentences with your own pet names. (I intentionally wrote "names" rather than "name" because using the same name every time perpetuates the original problems.)
- Add comments to at least one of those sentences discussing the name you used and how it might be translated.
- Translate your own such Chinese sentences into English.
- Write your own original English sentences.
- Write sentences that refer to pets without using their names. (For instance, in English, this could be done with pronouns.)

Or, if you are intent on translating these sentences:
- Use a name that means something close to though not identical to "cookie", but would be more easily understood as a pet name.
- Use a name that sounds close to though not identical to "cookie", but would be more easily understood as a pet name.
- Use the English name ("Cookie") untranslated and untransliterated, if that happens frequently in written Chinese outside Tatoeba.