Who could add Finnish as one of the "Language of the translation" options to the Tatoeba Wiki? Now there are only a few languages in the drop-down.

+1

Sounds great! Are you doing something else than rewriting the code with Python and mass importing sentences from free texts?

Hear, hear!

Now everything seems to be back to normal.

I can't see any older wall messages, so I reply to al_ex_an_der and Selena777 in a separate message. The links are not gone, but the linked sentences don't appear under the translated sentence. You can still see the linked sentences in the right-hand side, under the headline "Logs".

Thanks!

There are still some problems in the search. For example, if I search for "Why don't you" (http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentence...m=eng&to=und), I get 0 results. There should be quite many results, I guess. At least these should be there:
http://tatoeba.org/fin/sentences/show/2210703
http://tatoeba.org/fin/sentences/show/41239
http://tatoeba.org/fin/sentences/show/2210637

I know there aren't too many people developing Tatoeba and they are busy with their own lifes, too. Thank you for your great job!

The change I suggested about deviding sentences into categories by language knowledge level can be done gradually. You could first give option to add the languages you know in your profile in more controlled way (choose languages and your knowledge levels of those languages from drop-downs instead of just free text). I guess this requires a new table on the users database and a few changes on a couple of pages (register as new user, profile, edit profile and maybe some other page I can't now think of).

In the second step the sentences would be get a new piece of data: what's the language knowledge level of the owner of the sentence. This step could also include the option in user's profile to choose whose sentences you want to see (by checking the desired check-boxes): native only, native and nearly native, only beginners etc. Default would be native only (or maybe native + nearly native, since at least the Esperantists propably want to have it like this).

The following steps would include things like: "Show all sentences in language" page would get also check-boxes where you can choose the language levels of the sentences. All non-native or nearly native sentences would be marked with a warning sign and/or different colour. Then the next step would be adding native language flag/code (eg. eng) after the users username for easy check etc.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess even bilangual (or trilangual) people have one language stronger that the other(s). So there would be only one mother tongue and other(s) would be labelled as something like "nearly native" or something. I don't know how many actually bilingual people there are around here, but I guess it shouldn't become a huge problem. I also don't know how many of those people who have forgotten their mother tongue we have.

It just amuses me that the ones who are telling me to translate the English sentences and just be happy with that are all native English spekers. ;)

Actually I am currently translating the English sentences (I use this tool by CK: http://a4esl.com/temporary/tato...ng/1982.html). But you know what? It becomes extremely boring at some point.

"I'm busy."
"You are busy."
"Tom's busy."
"I'm not busy."
"You are not busy."
"Tom's not busy."
"Are you busy?"
"Tom, are you busy?"
"Is Tom busy?"
"Tom asked me if I was busy."
"They asked Tom if I was busy."
"Am I busy? Hell yeah!"
"I'm so busy I don't know what to do anymore."
"I'm so busy I can't take it anymore."
"I'm so busy I wish I die."
"I'm so busy I'm going to die."
"I'm so busy at work that I haven't left my office for weeks. I miss the sun light and feeling of light breeze on my skin. Last time I saw my family was maybe two months ago. That was last time I took a shower and changed my clothes. I'm extremely busy!"
"Dear lord! Please make it stop! I so busy, busy, busyyyyyy!"

And so on.

I'm just thinking that should Tatoeba provide me with a tool for this? Yes, I can create a spread sheet in Google docs with my Finnish sentences and crude translations in English (or any other language) and ask native speakers to go and add proper translations there. Then I can copy-paste the proper translations to Tatoeba. It just seems quite difficult... Especially the part of getting the natives to go to my spread sheet.

>In the article "How to be a good contributor in Tatoeba" (http://blog.tatoeba.org/2010/02...eba.html#rule4), Trang writes "We
>want sentences that really are what a native speaker would say." And a native speakers means a native speakers. Even if not all native speakers agree, it's fine as long as it's used by at least one native speaker in a spontaneous conversation or writing.

>Trang also writes that when we write sentences in non-native languages, we should have a native speaker check them.

>The reality is very different from the ideal. In most languages, native speakers are not willing to check and correct the sentences written by non-native speakers. There are also unnatural-sounding sentences translated too literally from other languages by native speakers (including >many of the Japanese sentences from the Tanaka Corpus).

The contradition in this is that people are told that they shouldn't be adding sentences in the languages that they are not totally fluent in or are not native speakers of, but still we let people add sentences in any language they wish to. From experience I know that about 2 % of people actually do read the instructions and the rest of them just do whatever they want. ;) So either we should abandon the nativity policy or prevent (or restrict) people from adding sentences in other languages than their mother tongue.

I stand up for the latter. First of all, when people create their profile in Tatoeba, it should be mandatory to give your native language and also optionally tell what languages you can speak and in which level. Of course some people will lie, but it's not the point in here, because the most propably won't. Existing users are also required to indicate their native language, otherwise they can't continue adding sentences.

After this is done all the existing sentences and the sentences to be added will be classified in two categories: native sentences and non-native sentences. The former are shown to the users as default. The sentences that no one owns (mainly from the Tanaka corpus) will fall into category non-native. The senteces added by non-native speakers should be marked with warning signs or translating them to other languages should be disabled totally.

I think this small and simple change would already help to increase the quality of the sentences tremendously. Or at least it would be start for the change.

And yes, the native speakers should take more efforts to go through the existing orphan sentences. But it's so much more fun to add new sentences...

//Edit. Corrected the last sentence, thanks CK!

Ah, I thought that this will be the advice I'll get. :)

I don't really see any problem with leaving comments about what's the meaning of an idiom or certain polysemic word in this context. There are many users who do so and in my opinion it's just giving more value to the users, especially when there is not yet any translation for the sentence. There are many words and expressions that are not covered by any dictionary (especially newly coined idioms and words), they are not taught in a class room and you can't figure out the meaning by googling them either. So, if there is a good quality explanation of the expression in the comments, it will eventually produce better translations.

It seems to me that you are saying: Tatoeba is not for learning new expressions or usage of words when there is not yet a proper translation of the sentence. And I can't see why learning an expression from somewhere else is more trustworthy than learning it from Tatoeba.

Of course there is always possibility of misunderstanding and it can happen if there and extra explanation or not.

Inspired by this sentence and the comments it has evoked: http://tatoeba.org/fin/sentences/show/3214876

I want to add more original Finnish sentences to the database, not just translate the existing sentences in other languages, so that I can cover more unique vocabulary of Finnish language. The problem is that my more complicated and more difficult sentences will just be lonely Finnish sentences with no translations forever. There doesn't seem to be too many advanced Finnish learners who could translate the sentences to some major language (English, Spain, German, Russian, French, also Esperanto...).

This being the case, which one is in your opinion better thing to do:

A) I try to translate the Finnish sentence into English with what abilities I have, and then let the sentence go, so that some native speaker can correct and/or adopt the sentence.

B) I write a comment to the original Finnish sentence and try to give hints on how the idoms etc. should be interpreted.

The advantage of option A is that it's easier to see if there is at least some sort of attempt of translation to other languages. Even if my translation is not perfect, others will get the idea what I'm trying to say and they can correct the language. If my English sentence is beoynd mending or totally incomprehensible, it can be removed. The problem with A is that there are users who are not aware the quality issues of sentences added by non-native speakers or some non-native English speaker might try to translate my poorly constructed English sentence into their own language.

B is safer, but let's say that someone goes to see the sentences owned by me and wants to translate them (http://tatoeba.org/fin/activiti...ces_of/Silja). They have to separately click on the sentences to see if there are any tips and tricks for the translators. In addition, as there is no common way of doing this, translators might not even realize that they should go and see the comments section if they are in doubt.

Anyway, in your opinion, which one is better, awkward translation by non-native speaker or just leaving comments to the sentence? Any other thoughts?

Kiitos! :)
Thanks! :)

Tatoeba's favicon has disappeared...

Just wondering what's the search functionality's indexing pace at the moment? I've added sentence [#2678719] a month ago (August 15th), but when I try to search with "näköala", the sentence doesn't yet show up in the search.

Hei Hadiga

Tervetuloa mukaan! Mitä kieltä puhut äidinkielenäsi? Voit auttaa parhaiten kääntämällä vaikkapa suomenkielisiä lauseita äidinkielellesi. Jos et osaa kääntää muiden lisäämiä lauseita, voit lisätä täysin uusia lauseita äidinkielelläsi.

-Silja

Olen suomentanut Tatoeban käyttöliittymän ja se on nyt valmis otettavaksi kaikkien käyttöön. Jos niin haluat, voit ottaa suomenkielisen version Tatoebasta käyttöön valitsemalla kieleksi “Suomi” sivun oikean yläreunan vetovalikosta.

Jos huomaat käännöksessä virheitä, huonoja suomennoksia tai muita outouksia, niin voit
a) käydä ehdottamassa parempaa käännöstä Launchpadissa: https://translations.launchpad..../fi/+translate (vaatii erillisen käyttäjätilin Launchpadiin)
b) ehdottaa parempaa käännöstä tässä viestissä, niin käyn muokkaamassa sen Launchpadiin.

Huomaa kuitenkin, että käyttöliittymän käännöksillä on omat rajoituksensa. Esimerkiksi muuttujiin tulevia tekstejä ei voi taivuttaa, joten vaikkapa käännös “xxx’s sentences” (jossa xxx on muuttuja, johon tuodaan käyttäjätunnus) on suomennettu hieman tökerösti “Käyttäjän xxx lauseet”. Tämä johtuu siitä, että suomennos “xxxn lauseet” tuottaa ongelmia, kun käyttäjätunnus loppuu konsonanttiin (käyttäjätunnus: Alan → Alann lauseet?). Myös käännösten pituus tulee rajoitteeksi joissain kohdin, erityisesti valikoissa, painikkeissa jne., joten suomennos ei voi olla kovin paljon englanninkielistä versiota pidempi.