I really am. :)

> е = ye
> ё = yo
>ю = yo
> я = ya
And:
> ы = y
"y" are different.:
е, ё, ю, я: it’s y.
ы: like Turkish ı.

Well, Russian transliteration is really easy to implement (although I don’t really like the system above ^^).

However, it will be useful only for the very beginners.

> needed by learners.
Well, boracasli IS a learner...

> Still, this is only half a solution since
> tags on the Russian sentence would presumably
> be in Russian but not all users will
> understand all the tags.
They will be understanable to the majority of people to whom Russian sentences will be of use.

The system you propose will make it much harder for non-English spreakers to add a tag. :o

> but the system will be organised by
> adding 2 variants of wording as equivalent.
There will be a way to tell that some tag is an alias of another one.

> Instead of having ten translation
> variants for a single sentence,
> contributers should rather translate
> ten different sentences
This does prevent users from using Tatoeba as a phrasebook. ^^

Language learners ususally can change gender or number in a verb ending. But sometimes people are willing to say just one phrase, and to be understood correctly.

Of course, we shouldn’t add dozens of translations for every single sentence. (In fact, we won’t be able to ^^) But concerning the sentences that are the easiest and are often said or spoken, such translation may turn out to be helpful.

Thank you for your explanation.

> but the system will be organised by
> adding 2 variants of wording as equivalent.
Sysko said there will be a way to tell that some tag is an alias of another one.

This system can also be used for internationalised tags.

I totally agree.

I believe that the problem is that tags can be viewed only after clicking on the sentence page.

I think we need some way to present tags. I.e., it can be done by icons: if a sentence has a female face with an open mouth, it has ‘female’ or ‘said by female’ tags. If a sentence has a male face with an ear icon, it is ‘said to male’, etc.

This will help learners to find the sentence they need somewhat easier. Hovewer, this would still be worse than annotations... :o Actually, I’m not sure what is the best way to handle this.

BTW, I believe 'you have to' and 'you must' is not an alternative wording, since the sense does change... At least according to what I know.

I believe this is not a good solution, because:
a) it is not suitable for use outside of Tatoeba, because comments are not exportable,
b) it's not suitable for beginners since they may be not proficent enough to understand comments
c) it's not suitable for automatic processing, because comments are free-form.

While the first problem can be soloved by adding an 'annotation' field (it was suggested by FeunDRenais earlier, and I believe it would be useful for learners... and for playing games ^^), others still remain.

Of course, this approach also has its downsides, as illustrated by http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/475445 (It[masculine/feminine/neuter] is (his|hers), isn't it?): having too many sentences may be hard to read, but still I believe it's a better solution.

Sorry for not replying earlier.

Actually, as far as I've understand the original idea, users were to add any tags they want, but the system will be organised by adding 2 variants of wording as equivalent.

What you offer is different from this idea.

But if there will be a database of translations... why not?

But this way, there will be only a defined set of tags, and adding new tags would be problematic. But well... if the tags will be established, this shouldn't be a problem (except for By- and From-, but I believe they should go into a sentence other kind of medatada one day, not into tags).

This way, we are preventing users from coining new tags. But, well... maybe they don't really need this. Actually, now I don't know.

But the translation DB will surely help.

> That's a long reply. Sorry...
I do learn a lot by reading a well-written English like yours. :)

Yes, of course there is one. But sentences on Tatoeba should reflect how things are written in different situations, not only in official documents.

In Russian there seems to be no single standard. Usually we write 10$, but in financtial literature one can find $10. Usually we write 1 000,0, but 1'000,0 can be used too.

> Operating systems and Software applications
> such as Microsoft Excel do enforce these formats.
They don’t. On the Format page you can choose any format you like. On the “Language and Regional settings” page in the Control Panel you can choose how these numbers should be displayed system-wide. E.g., in Russian Windows numbers are formatted with non-breaking spaces by default (1 000 = 1,000; 1,000 = 1.000).

All modern OS’es have these settings, and all well-written applications do use them.

I still believe we shouldn’t do this, at least until Tatoeba has a system of internationalisation for tags.

This would render the system much less useful for non-English speakers.

The current approact (tagging in the language of the sentence) allows anyone reusing data to show the name of the author near the quote, in brackets.

The approach you suggest forces authors to use conversion tables... And these lists have to be compiled for every language on their own.

IMHO that renders By- and From- tags much less useful.

"2nd p" brings "2nd personn", while "2nd P" brings normal variants.

It seems the problem is that tag autocompletion is case-sensitive, while tags aren’t.

Theoretical question. Is it correct to write noöne? :)

Many English and Japanese are from Tanaka corpus. It existed before Tatoeba.

English, Russian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Dutch, French, Spanish, Chinese, German and Portuguese were first, I think. But I'm not sure.

I wasn't here to hear you when you've written this. :)

> I'm not quite sure what you mean by "not really repeatable"
I meant that By- yahs and (especially) From- tags are not really meant to be searched in the database.

They are for people to know who wrote the sentence, not to filter the sentences by this tag.
I doubt there will be another quote from Belyj oslik.