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sharptoothed
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sharptoothed
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TATAR1
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I think it would be a really great feature if the lists were sortable. Then one could for instance translate a story or a book or whatever. I would suggest that there should be two types of lists like in HTML: ordered lists (<OL>) and unordered lists (<UL>). While the latter would be just a collection, in the former there would be a sense behind the order of the sentences. This feature might be easily programmable, but very much enrich the platform, without any risk of featuritis.

I think the new version of Tatoeba will allow metadata on sentences, so maybe you could have a field called "sequence number" or something and you could sort by that in the list view.

What if each sentences showed a mini comment window on mouseover?

yep it is possible, the new database allow to put whatever metadata you want on sentences, but after I'm not sure if the mouseover will be the best way, because I also plan to make a software to auto align the sentences and its direct translation, so that when you will mouseover on a word/expression, it will highlight the corresponding expression in the translations (or highlight nothing if it's something which is not tranlated / too hard to align, to avoid mistakes)

You could put comments word-for-word highlights on mouseover and a comment mini-window on left-click on a separate button.

What if we could specially search for:
- random orphaned sentences in a certain language?
- random sentences in a certain language that have no translations in a certain other language?

The second one you sort of already can. (It's just not a random order, but I don't think it matters much.) For example, http://tatoeba.org/spa/sentence...in/spa/eng/eng shows all Spanish sentences not directly translated into English. It also shows indirect translations so you won't accidentally make duplicates.
The first feature would be really helpful!

http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentence...nd/indifferent
the first one is also possible, "not directly translated into : all languages" means in fact "orphaned", but seems it's not obvious, so maybe replace in the select "all languages" by "orphaned" ?

Uhm I think papabear wants non-adopted sentences, and this is still missing, isn't it?

yep this feature is still missing.

What about adding video embed for future versions to support sign languages like ASL?
There should be lots of platforms like vimeo, that could be integrated quite easily. (I think that platform should then be open-source and free; i dont know if vimeo is both)
What do you think?

I don't know about other sign languages, but ASL can be expressed (at the loss of an extreme amount of nuance) in English words called "glosses." For example, "DEAF YOU?" represents the sign for "deaf" followed by the sign for "you," both done while the eyebrows are raised, meaning that the sentence is a yes-or-no question. This translates to "Are you deaf?"
For the Tatoeba platform, this means that ASL (and possibly other sign languages) are expressible (in a very limited way) in a textual format. However, Deaf (that's capital-D Deaf) contributors will probably feel most at home with some sort of video platform. Deaf people are proud of their language and heritage and we ought to let all of their linguistic nuance color Tatoeba.

interesting, if it's possible to express it in a textual format, then maybe a "standard" already exist for this ?
Anyway I've never tought about sign languages, and it seems challenging, and we love challenge :)

That's the thing, though: there is no standard for glosses. And even then, they can only convey so much. Not just connotative information, but GRAMMATICAL and LEXICAL information is conveyed in facial expression, spatial positioning, and mouth movements (called "non-manual markers.") (For this reason, I don't think many Deaf people will mind showing their faces.) Same idea for speeding up or slowing down a sign.
Deaf people, by the way, do not usually write or type in glosses; they write in English. This makes them bilingual. Glosses are only used as an intermediary tool for people who learn ASL as a foreign language and are used to textual formats. I can see glosses only as an accompaniment to video clips if we want Tatoeba to be a good repository for sign language material.

>Deaf people, by the way, do not usually write or type in glosses; they write in English.
No, french deaf people usually write in French, germans in German, chinese in Chinese, etc...as far as I know.
By the way, there are MANY DIFFERENT sign languages in different parts of the world. ASL actually stands for AMERICAN sign language, meaning USian sign language...It's understood mainly by...errr...US people and a few canadians, because even Brits have a different sign language named...BSL!
Not only is there a world outside this "America", but there is even another "America" outside that one, like...you know...petty nations like Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia,... just a mere half a billion people...no more...who also are americans who don't use "American" Sign Language but their own sign languages.

This statement was not referred to the whole world, and that was obvious, sacredceltic...

and so what? Am I allowed to reply only to posts that refer to the whole world? By virtue of your grace, maybe? It was obvious to me that this sentence meant what it means, which is it ignored 90% of deaf people in this world, whoever it was intended to. This wall is a forum that is indexed by all search engines on the planet and subsequently conveys information in all directions, including mistakes or this kind of disinformation. I am perfectly in my right to respond in order to correct misconceptions that I deem damaging. And I don't ask for your permission.

I don't think you need to seize every possible chance to be an anti-English/America troll.
If you really didn't think that everyone knew all of that already, then maybe you should just keep quiet.

>I don't think you need to seize every possible chance to be an anti-English/America troll.
Pardon? You're insulting me? For what purpose? I was merely reminding everyone that not everything writes in English, as was clearly implied in that sentence. Had it been "French" instead iof English, I'm sure you would have been the first to correct the author.
This diktat is just unbearable! It is a constant insult to the Peoples of this world and I am perfectly entitled to remind people here about the world's diversity. It's already enough that the imposed language for moderation and administration here is English which is the language of under 1 billion people who are the most monolingual people on this planet.
So the troll here is you, because this problem is not personal at all and you're making it so. So YOU keep quiet, muppet!

>I was merely reminding everyone that not everything writes in English
That's fine, but you could certainly do it in a much better way.
>as was clearly implied in that sentence.
No, it wasn't. It could have been more clear, but they were obviously referring to ASL as an example (see the very first post).
>Had it been "French" instead iof English, I'm sure you would have been the first to correct the author.
No, actually. If they had used French Sign Language as an example, and said that they wrote in French, I would have felt no need to correct it (since it is correct, within the context of the example). I don't think you would have either, but maybe I'm wrong.
>It's already enough that the imposed language for moderation and administration here is English which is the language of under 1 billion people who are the most monolingual people on this planet.
That's true, but what do you want it to be? Esperanto? The closest thing to a culturally neutral language that could be used for Tatoeba is Lojban, but even being a Lojban speaker myself I would never advocate for that. It seems to me like Tatoeba should work to make the site usable for speakers of ANY language, and they seem to be doing a fine job at that so far.
Overall, your point is fine. Just try not to sound so angry. It really doesn't sound like you are just trying to inform people.

Listen kid, since you proclaim that you want to be fluent in 5+languages within 5 years (which must make every linguist here choke with laughter...it is about as naïve as the US army speaking Arabic to iraqians through computer voice synthesis, aha ! I had to struggle to breathe again with that one!), you should better be studying them hard rather than trying to lecture me on language political corectedness, topic in which you obviously are no more versed than in language learning, especially if you think that this service is equitable, because it just isn't. bebzu'e

I'm sorry to offend you. I realize my goal is high, but I always set my goals high. I'd rather set a goal unrealistically high and achieve as much as possible, than set a goal I know I can achieve and not learn to my full potential.
I really don't want to turn this into some kind of personal argument. We are both guilty of that. So please try to be more polite.
u'i do cusku zo bebzu'e to noi na drani valsi toi gi'e pe'i na jimpe fi le bangu .i je ku'i mi na djuno .i xenru va'o lo nu srera

> So please try to be more polite.
You started being rude to me. Don't you complain!

That was addressed in jakov's first post.

I recognize that there are different sign languages. What I meant to emphasize is that Deaf people tend to use preexisting written languages. Sorry for the confusion, and thank you for reminding everyone about sign languages all around the world. Fortunately, the same video platform should be able to account for them all, all things considered.

Thanks for your resonance to my idea.
Youre right that 'glosses' could never replace the signs, but the combination of the glosses and the video would make the videos searchable and i guess easier to combine to other sentences. Also one could read about the content of the video prior to watching it.
Also, as you say "Glosses are only used as an intermediary tool for people who learn ASL as a foreign language" I think it would be perfect for those who want to learn e.g. ASL to have the glosses for easier learning.

I'm not sure if it's better or worse than glosses, but this site: http://www.signwriting.org/ has a different take on written sign language.
Short description: each possible sign/action can be expressed as a combination of a few mnemonic symbols.

I'll take a LIBRAS course this semester, hopefully.
LIBRAS means Brazilian Signal Language and there are lots of material on the Internet. For example, a dictionary [1]. I guess it has some kind of "glosses" too.
If Tatoeba adds support for sign languages, I think we could discover contributors more passionate than the Esperanto ones.
[1] http://www.acessobrasil.org.br/libras/

Cool idea, I never thought of having sign languages on Tatoeba.
Here's another idea: we create a somewhat realistic 3D model of a human including a skeletal animation system, which could be displayed in a browser using WebGL and controlled with JavaScript. The hard part would be getting accurate animations. One possibility is using some sort of motion capture system that could take a video recorded with a webcam and convert it to animation coordinates for the model. I know there is software that does this (e.g. Kinect), but I'm not aware of any free/open source software. The benefits would be very small bandwidth use, a consistent look, and people that might not want to have videos of themselves would still be able to contribute sentences.

At first glance I thought you were making fun of my idea, but at second read i saw you re meaning it.
Anyway, although i appreciate your idea, I'm not sure, whether the nuances of the facial expression etc would survive this process and whether this process wouldnt be too complicated in comparison to nowadays easily feasable video upload (i hope that speakers of sign language have broadband internet, as many other websites have sign videos on them).
Nevertheless, if you know anyone, who could do what you mentioned, feel free to continue your effords into this direction.

Nope, I wasn't trying to make fun of anything. Sorry if it sounded like that.
I realize it's a crazy idea, but I just thought it might be interesting. (It's actually an idea I had a long time ago, long before I discovered Tatoeba.) I have some interest in working on an open source video capture system anyway for a number of other purposes, but I certainly won't have it ready any time soon. As you suggested, a simple video service would be fine.
(Also, the problem of facial expressions as you mentioned might actually be one of the easiest parts of the system. Facial expressions are fairly easy to analyze with software. What I have a feeling will be much harder is fingers...)

I was looking for LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign Language) materials on the internet and found this:
http://www.acessobrasil.org.br/...php?itemid=163
They're trying to do a Portuguese-LIBRAS translator. Explanations are here, in Portuguese:
http://www.acessobrasil.org.br/index.php?itemid=39

All sentences added by the user stefz start with a lower-case letter. The user has been asked to correct them several times but they seem to have left Tatoeba. Could someone please correct the sentences?

done

Could you also take care of this sentence?
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/662266

no problem

Merci ! :)

(eo) Unu frazo (cetere malĝusta) afiŝiĝis, kiel "ŝatata" de mi. Kiel do mi povas ĝin malaperigi ?
(fr) Une phrase (d'ailleurs incorrecte) s'est accidentellement affichée comme étant pour moi une phrase "favorite". Comment puis-je la faire disparaître ?

Vi devas klaki sur la koron de la frazo:
Normale estas rugxa tiu koro, kaj kun verda pluso - simbolo por "aldoni al sxatataj frazoj". Sed se tiu frazo jam (hazarde) estas ene de viaj sxatataj frazoj la simbolo normale farigxas griza kun minuso. Tiun grizan simbolon vi klaku por fordoni la frazon for de viaj sxatataj frazoj.

(eo) Dankon al 'jakpv" ! La frazo malaperis el miaj "sxatataj frazoj", kion mi celis.

Hodiaŭ ankaŭ al mi okazis io stranga. En la ĉefpaĝo aperis frazo kvazaŭ mi estis ĵus aldoninta ĝin. Sed ĝi estis aldonita antaŭ tagoj kaj kune kun pliaj du tradukoj. Hodiaŭ la sama frazo aperis sola kaj kun ne indikita lingvo. Do mi simple redaktis ĝin.

I'm Tatoeba in morning, it's first time! :)
Kind regards,
boracasli

A minor suggestion regarding the generated pinyin on Chinese sentences:
When two syllables are joined together as one word and the second begins with a vowel, put a ' between them. This usually seems to be done with the pinyin that I have seen.
For example, on http://tatoeba.org/spa/sentences/show/698913, it would be nice to see "kù'ài" rather than "kùài" (especially because "uai" is a valid syllable final).

Oh yep sure, in fact the software I've made only segments words, the words themselves, and their pinyin is already stored, so it's just a per entry correction to make :), I will do that, if you see other entries which are missing this correction, can you put them in this thread ? :)

Can Text from a project under the GNU GPL Version 2 be added without concern? I've read that Tatoeba is licenced under CC but i am not sure what consequences this has: Does it mean i have to add a comment to every sentence i copy from a gpl project?
What I would like to do is add some sentences from www.reta-vortaro.de

Unfortunately, I don't think this is possible. According to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lic...OtherLicenses, the GPL is not compatible with CC-BY.

you still can contact the author to ask him if he's the author of this sentences, or if at least it does have the right on these sentences, so that he can give you a copy of them relicenced under the CC-BY or a compatible licence. Because to be honest the GPL has not been made for text, books or so, there are more suitable licences for this kind of data (such as the CC-BY / CC-BY-SA , or the Gnu FDL if you want to say in Gnu's licence), so I do think the guy chose th GPL more because it was to say "my data are open" rather than for the exact terms of the licence. So it costs nothing to ask :) (1000 shanghainese sentences come from a copyrighted books for which the author given me the explicit authorization to use them under CC-BY)

But there still have lots of local word like country name, person name, and nouns.

but it's still not a different language, and it still can be written in both script. If a sentence is specific to a part of China, then it will be tagged accordingly.