Tatoeba update (Jul 20th, 2011)

This is a very small update.

What's new

• You can filter your private messages to only display those that are unread. This one was added several weeks ago actually. And to be honest, I've added this feature mostly for myself. I have 20+ unread messages and some of them are from months ago. I usually leave them unread when it's a request I cannot take care of "right now", as a reminder that I need to take care of it someday...
• The activity timeline page now only displays the number of sentences added for each day in the current month. You can however browse to see the activity for other months. That was in the attempt to make this page a little bit faster to display.
• For people who use our data, there is a new file that you can download: sentences_detailed.csv. This file contains additional information about the sentence: the contributor who "owns" the sentence at the time of the export, the date when the sentence was added and the date when it was last modified.

What next

• We will give the possibility to contributors to delete their own sentences, in the case where the sentence doesn't have any translation. This is mostly useful for people who add a sentence by mistake.

Rules against bad behavior

A little explanation

These rules are not about the goal of the project (i.e. the corpus), but about something this project cannot exist without: the community.

A member can be a terrible contributor corpus wise, but a great contributor community wise, and conversely a great contributor corpus wise but a terrible contributor community wise. These are two very different aspects, but we need both kind of people.

We need people who have deep linguistic knowledge, who are able to contribute sentences and translations of good quality, to post relevant explanations or analysis of a sentences, a phrase, a word. And we need people who have good social skills, who are able to make other members feel like this is a nice place with nice people, and that they can have a great time contributing to the project.

I had established some detailed policies about what kind of content we accept and don’t accept. But there isn’t really much about what kind of behavior we tolerate and don’t tolerate. There’s the article about being disrespectful and using private messages rather than flaming, lecturing, criticizing someone in public. There is one point in the contributor’s guide about doing what you can to make Tatoeba a more socially pleasant place. But that’s pretty much all.

So here we go, some official policies...

The point of all of this is to avoid having people leaving the project because they feel disgusted by the behavior of other members.

Things we do not tolerate

1. Insults: saying something offensive about someone or some people.

2. Harassment: bothering someone repeatedly.

3. Accusations: stating that someone is doing something with bad intentions.

4. Blaming: saying that a problem is due to someone’s fault.

5. Provocation: writing something that intentionally makes other people angry.

6. Retaliation: replying to insults, harassment, accusations, blaming or provocation with something that doesn't help.

7. Bad faith: lying, deceiving, being dishonest.

8. Generally speaking, we do not tolerate any kind of behavior that harms the collaborative and civilized atmosphere of Tatoeba.

All of this is pretty obvious. What is less obvious is how we are going to decide that something is an insult, or harassment, or an accusation, etc. Initially, I had written here specific rules about insults and harassment (which I considered as the two most important types of bad behaviors), but I decided to replace them with more general ideas for the time being, because the rules have not proven to be efficient yet, and they weren’t complete either.

They will still remain published, because, well, we need to start somewhere. I must insist on the fact that they are not established. I actually encourage everyone who has enough time in their hands to try to hack these rules, and to try to counter-hack the hacks, and hopefully through this process we can come up with a better set of rules.

Sanctions

People who behave against the general policies will be subject to sanctions.

Depending on how Tatoeba evolves technically and depending on the situation, here a non exhaustive list of the possible sanctions:

1. You may lose your right to post comments on sentences for a certain period of time.
2. You may lose your right to post messages on the Wall for a certain period of time.
3. You may lose your right to add new sentences for a certain period of time.
4. You may lose your right to tag sentences for a certain period of time.
5. Your profile description may be hidden from everyone else for a certain period of time.

The exact sanction and the period of time of the sanction will be decided specifically for each case. And as I said, the list is not exhaustive. You may receive another sanction than the one mentioned above.

A few considerations

Tatoeba currently doesn’t provide the possibility to edit comments, which makes it difficult to take care of messages where only one sentences is offensive but the rest is fine. It’s not very practical, but if you have offended someone and only need to remove that one sentence, you will have to send a message to TatoebaPeaceKeeper and indicate what you want your edited message to be. Or, you can join the dev team and code that feature.

Tatoeba currently doesn’t provide any kind of “ignore” feature, which makes it difficult for people who cannot stand each other to simply ignore each other. Well, you will have to leave without that luxury for now. Or, you can join the dev team and code that feature.

Tatoeba currently doesn’t have any internal mechanism to stop a flaming war before it’s too late (i.e. by preventing everyone to post a reply to a provocative comment with even more provocation). So what we will do is that we will list disrespectful comments on the TatoebaPeaceKeeper profile page, under the category “Dangerous territory”. If you’re going to reply to a comment that is under this category, make sure you are as neutral as possible. Or, you can join the dev team and code a feature for that.

Tatoeba currently doesn’t have any official “peace keeper” who monitors the activity every single second of the day and night, and take actions faster than lightning whenever a conflict is emerging. Which means you cannot expect your issues with other members to be heard and taken care of within the minute (perhaps not even within the week). But, you can always recommend us someone who can take these responsibilities, and convince them to become a peace keeper.

The rules I’ve written are not perfect. If you have better ideas, please suggest them. If not, please follow the rules.

New users status names

I decided to change the names of the users status.

• user → contributor
• trusted user → advanced contributor
• moderator → corpus maintainer

The reason for this change is that, to some extent, the previous names carried a too much "social weight", and I feel this is not the best way to go. I will write another post to talk more in details about the social and collaborative aspect of Tatoeba, but here I want to list all the existing status in Tatoeba and clarify what they mean.

Spammer

This status is used to flag account that were used to send spam.

Inactive

This status is used to flag account which users are no more active. Usually, these are users who decided to delete their account.

Contributor

This is the status everyone starts with when they register. They give access to the main contribution features of Tatoeba.

Advanced contributor

This status is given to users who have sufficiently contributed and are fairly familiar with the project. Advanced contributors currently have access to 2 extra features: they can link/unlink sentences, and they can tag sentences.

Generally speaking, if we implement a feature that is a bit tricky and experimental, we would make it available to advanced contributors first, before making it globally available.

This status is only given to users who accept it. We will not force this status upon anyone who prefers to remain a simple and modest contributor.

You don't need to wait for us to offer you the possibility to change status. Quite the contrary, we encourage you to ask for this status if you feel you can help us out on the linking and tagging front.

Corpus maintainer

This status is given to advanced contributors who are willing to help with maintenance tasks.

Corpus maintainers were previously called "moderators", but they were not moderators in the usual context of a community. That is to say, Tatoeba moderators did NOT have the job to track users who do no behave well, they did NOT have the job to listen to users complaining about other users, they did NOT have the job to ban users for not behaving well, they did NOT have any kind of responsibility regarding the community.

Their responsibilities were, and still are strictly restricted to the corpus: to delete sentences that are added by mistake, to delete sentences that are added as spam, to delete sentences that are copyrighted, to edit incorrect sentences that were abandonned by their owner...

This is why this status has been renamed into "corpus maintainer".

Admin

Admins have the power to do pretty much everything, with all the responsibilities that go with it. Among other things, admins are the only ones who can change a user's status, which means that a contributor cannot become an advanced contributor or a corpus maintainer without the intervention of an admin.

Note that these status WILL evolve over time and may even disappear (in a distant future) to leave room to another (and hopefully better) kind of system. Right now, this is the best kind organization we can afford.

Some tips for those who want to link sentences

In February, I've added a page that makes it easier to translate sentences of a specific user. For insstance, you can easily translate my sentences by going here. Or by going to my profile, click on "Sentences" (in the right-side column), and click on "Translate these sentences" (at the bottom of the right-side column).

In March, I've implemented an improvement of the "linking" feature. For those who have no idea what linking is about, please read the point #2 of the contributors guide.

So now, if you try to link a sentence, you will see that it only updates the line with the translation. It does NOT redirect anymore to a new page, and I think it makes linking much more comfortable.

I also made it possible for trusted users to link ANY sentences (not just the ones that belongs to them).

In April, I've implemented the possibility to filter the languages of the translations. If you go to your settings, and add "jpn,hun,swe" in the languages field, you will only see translations in Japanese, Hungarian and Swedish. You will still be able to view sentences in all the languages though, only the translations are filtered. And by the way, if you want to know what is the language code of a language, they are listed in the sentences statistics page.

So with all these features, if you are a trusted user and in the mood for massive linking, what I'd advise you to do is the following.

1. Go to your settings and your languages in which you are able to link. This way, you will not be annoyed translations you don't understand in sentences that have 50+ translations.
2. Browse your sentences in "translate" mode, and link anything you can link. Actually, you can even browse sentences of anyone you want, and link anything you can link.
3. When you're done, you can go back to your settings and erase the languages, so that you can see again the translations in all languages.

Happy linking!

Languages stats and leaders

It's been a long time I didn't publish stats, did I? But thanks to sysko who got us rid of the duplicates yesterday, I'm feeling a bit more comfortable talking about numbers.

Language ranking

I've decided to include the "leaders" for each language; it's an interesting information. It should give a good idea of who are the current most influential members in Tatoeba for each language.

NOTE 1: All the leaders are not necessarily references in the language they are leader of.

NOTE 2: The stats only list the languages that have more than 1000 sentences.

Meaning of the fields:

• # → rank of the language.
• code → ISO 639-3 code corresponding to the language.
• language → name of the language (in English).
• total → total number of sentences in the language.
• leader → username of the member who owns the most sentences in the language.
• owns → number of sentences owned by the user in the language.
• %owned → percentage of sentences owned by the user in the language (%owned = owns / total).

#	code	language	total	leader	owns	%owned
1	eng	English	176232	CK	54337	30,8%
2	jpn	Japanese	154779	fcbond	1483	1,0%
3	epo	Esperanto	78593	GrizaLeono	13694	17,4%
4	fra	French	68426	sacredceltic	16450	24,0%
5	deu	German	58485	MUIRIEL	12824	21,9%
6	spa	Spanish	37755	Shishir	9138	24,2%
7	pol	Polish	30856	zipangu	22699	73,6%
8	cmn	Mandarin Chinese	27869	fucongcong	9022	32,4%
9	rus	Russian	26757	Hellerick	6605	24,7%
10	ita	Italian	19329	Guybrush88	8235	42,6%
11	nld	Dutch	18746	martinod	8140	43,4%
12	ukr	Ukrainian	15826	aandrusiak	4382	27,7%
13	hun	Hungarian	12656	szaby78	3574	28,2%
14	pes	Persian	10280	pliiganto	3816	37,1%
15	heb	Hebrew	10118	Eldad	7448	73,6%
16	por	Portuguese	9628	brauliobezerra	5994	62,3%
17	ara	Arabic	7940	saeb	5886	74,1%
18	isl	Icelandic	7721	Swift	7472	96,8%
19	tur	Turkish	6434	boracasli	3821	59,4%
20	nds	Low Saxon	5753	slomox	5490	95,4%
21	dan	Danish	5032	danepo	4628	92,0%
22	bul	Bulgarian	4602	ednorog	4027	87,5%
23	uig	Uyghur	3747	FeuDRenais	3263	87,1%
24	hin	Hindi	3468	minshirui	3463	99,9%
25	wuu	Shanghainese	3257	fucongcong	1612	49,5%
26	vie	Vietnamese	2987	autuno	1876	62,8%
27	bel	Belarusian	2158	Demetrius	2089	96,8%
28	tlh	Klingon	2104	Vortarulo	2097	99,7%
29	jbo	Lojban	2017	Zifre	1179	58,5%
30	yue	Cantonese	1930	nickyeow	1767	91,6%
31	nob	Norwegian (Bokmål)	1872	contour	1090	58,2%
32	fin	Finnish	1585	Hautis	502	31,7%
33	ina	Interlingua	1537	McDutchie	1494	97,2%
34	swe	Swedish	1190	Don	719	60,4%

Progress

Let's see how the corpus has progressed since last time...

• We've reached our 800,000+ milestone; we're now at 834,000+ sentences.
• The top 5 is still the same.
• Persian and Hebrew joined the 10,000+ family!
• Low Saxon, Bulgarian, Klingon, Finnish and Interlingua joined the 1000+ family!

At this rate, we should reach our 1 million milestone some time around September :)

Who wants to help?

On Monday this week we’ve seen a pretty strong wave of new visitors from Spain, via meneame.net. We’ve never had that many (7100+) visits in one day and it made me feel like it’s time for Tatoeba to get a better organization and more people involved. Like, really.

Allan (aka. sysko) and myself (aka. Trang) have been saying for too long that we don’t have time. With our respective busy lives and with the growing community, we cannot take care anymore of many small or not so small requests made by users. But we’re not the only ones who can make this project more awesome, you can too!

What can you do?

I’m listing below the various “departments” of Tatoeba, with a general description. I will be posting more specific tasks whenever needed, but the general descriptions should give you an idea of all the things you can do if you enjoy this project and feel like being a bigger part of it.

Corpus
This is what everybody works on when they join Tatoeba: adding, translating and correcting sentences. Generally speaking, we’ve got the “sentences” part going on pretty well. We would just need more moderators (ideally, at least one moderator for each language).
However the corpus is not just about sentences. It is also about links, tags and audio. And for these, we don’t have a very good system yet, but to improve that, we’d need people to help in development...

Development
This is about programming. There’s a huuuuge amount of work to do here. We have plenty of ideas to code but also a lot of maintenance to do... So we’re going to need more people in the dev team.
Sysko started working on the next version of Tatoeba (in C++) and we’ll have to wait patiently until he’s ready to bring more people in. In the meantime, I am maintaining and improving whatever I can in the current version (in PHP).
If you’re interested in joining us, you’ll be mostly helping me with the current version, but I really hope you’ll stick around long enough to be part of the new version as well.

Documentation
This is about writing articles (or making videos) that explain what the project is about, how it works, what are the policies, what are the procedures if you want to do whatever you want to do, etc. Basically, the documentation is the place where people can go to search (and hopefully find) answers to questions they ask themselves about the project.
Documentation is extremely important. Without it, it’s difficult to get more people involved and quite unfortunately, we have way too little documentation.

Community
This is about taking care of the social aspect of Tatoeba, and maintaining a good karma around the project. It’s about making people feel welcomed, helping them understand better the project, encouraging and thanking them for their good work, getting them to calm down if they get involved in conflicts, contact those who would be good trusted users candidates, and more.

Translation
This is about translating the interface, documentation and news.
The news is currently not translated at all and only parts of the documentation have been translated into a handful of languages. We'd really like to improve on this front to make the project accessible to as many as possible.
We're doing better on the interface, which has been translated into many languages through Launchpad. Still, the translations are not all perfect and ideally we would like each language to have one person overseeing it to ensure the overall quality.

Design
I’m talking about graphical design here. This is about making Tatoeba prettier. The interface, the icons, the illustrations, the videos, the goodies... We need designers to... well, design these things. Great design is not vital, but I personally think it makes people happier. It’s much more pleasant to contribute on a platform with a nice interface, it’s much more pleasant to read or watch a tutorial if it’s illustrated with nice graphics.

Tests
This is about making sure that Tatoeba works as it should work, especially when we implement new features. Testing is not going to be super urgent until we have a bigger dev team though.

Technical support
This is about helping people who can’t get things to work properly. When users ask for help on the Wall, the whole community can help. But we also sometimes receive emails asking for technical support, and it would be nice to have a person (other than sysko or myself) who can dedicate time answering to these emails.

Communication
This is about about informing the community of things they may be interested to know. For instance writing a release note whenever we’re introducing new features, publishing statistics, announcing new policies or important decisions.

Events
This is about organizing special activities on Tatoeba. For instance we organize a Tatoeba day every month (or almost... we had none in April though because I was way too busy this month). We’ve also tried organizing a contest (for the banners), and it would be nice to organize some more.
Events can bring fun into the project, but finding ideas, planning them out and motivating people to participate is quite some work.

Interested in helping out?

If you are interested in helping us, then here’s what to do:

1. Send us an email: team@tatoeba.org.
2. Use the following title: I want to help ([category], [category], ...). Ex: I want to help (documentation, tests, news).
3. Tell us a little about yourself in your email and what kind of tasks you feel ready to take on.
4. We will contact you back and assign you more specific tasks and give you any information you may beed to know.
5. Update your profile accordingly (and regularly) to let the rest of the community know what you’re working on.

Tatoeba banners

Until I find an appropriate space on Tatoeba's website, I'm publishing here on the blog the final banners for Tatoeba.

You are encouraged to use these images if you want to make a graphical link to Tatoeba (from your blog or website). You have the choice between a big version (392x72 pixels) and a small version (88x31 pixels) in various languages.

They were kindly made by Muiriel, who won the mini-contest we organized back in January-February. She modified her initial submission into something better. She would like to thank CK for the idea of using the ".org" in the big version.

If you would like to have a banner in a language that is not present below...

• Contact Muiriel by private message or on IRC (server: freenode, channel: #tatoeba).

• Send her the translations of "more than words." and of "...because a language is more than the sum of its words." into your desired language.

• Tell her where to put the new line for the text of the big banner. For instance, in English, the line break is after "more":

...because a language is more

than the sum of its words

• Add your translation here: http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/761916

PS: Some languages don't have (yet?) a "big" version or a "small" version. This is normal.

[ara] Arabic

[bel] Belarusian

[cmn] Mandarin Chinese

[deu] German

[eng] English

[epo] Esperanto

[fra] French

[ina] Interlingua

[ita] Italian

[jbo] Lojban

[nld] Dutch

[por] Portuguese

[rus] Russian

[spa] Spanish

[tur] Turkish

[ukr] Ukrainian

First Tatoeba mug of all times!!

I felt like sharing this because, let's be honest, it's pretty cool. Let me present you... the first Tatoeba mug! :D

http://tatoeba.org/sentences/show/33537

...which I unexpectedly received as a present, for my birthday.

NOW WHO WANTS ONE? :D

Tatoeba update (Apr 7th, 2011)

Hopefully useful stuff :)

What's new

• The language of the sentence is indicated in the comments (on homepage and comments pages).
• Tatoeba will remember the last language you've picked when you translate or add a sentence (provided you did not set your browser to refuse cookies).
• You can set your language preferences in your settings. This will filter the (direct and indirect) translations to be displayed only in the languages you've indicated. You will still be able to view sentences that are not in your languages, only the translations are affected. Additionally, the list of languages that you see when you translate or add a new sentence will be restricted to the languages in your settings.
• And one more small thing: translations are ordered by language (based on the ISO code).

What next

• Page to merge duplicates.
• Page to link sentences that cannot be linked with the link button because they are too far away.

Tatoeba day #4 - Other sentences

Deutsch

1. Ihre lederne Aktentasche hatte sie unter dem Ellenbogen eingeklemmt, das Handy zwischen Ohr und Schulter, unter dem anderen Ellenbogen die Akte, in der einen Hand einen Kaffeebecher und in der anderen einen Blumenstrauß, als sie auf der Treppe mit Herrn Wallenkamp zusammenstieß. [#772888]
2. Jesus hasst dich. [#639202]
3. Der irische Jig und die französische Gigue unterscheiden sich in Tempo, Mikrorhythmik und deutschem Genus. [#796420]
4. Der Drops ist gelutscht. [#642921]
5. Würden Sie bitte einen Warentrennstab zwischen Ihre und meine Waren legen?! [#806248]
6. Schnurren Tiger? [#569553]
7. In der deutschen Sprache ist es möglich Substantive miteinander zu verbinden, so dass Worte herauskommen wie Türschlossenteiser oder Jugendmedienschutzstaatsvertrag, welche meist in keinem Wörterbuch stehen, aber doch wirkliche Wörter sind. [#701923]
8. Hamburger sind eine köstlichere Labsal als Berliner. [#811009]
9. Ein seltsames deutsches Wort ist "entfernen", denn die Vorsilbe "ent-" bedeutet, dass man etwas fortnimmt, in diesem Fall also die Ferne fortnimmt, sich also nähert, was aber das genaue Gegenteil der wirklichen Bedeutung von "entfernen" ist. [#636885]
10. Schließlich wird gefolgert, dass eine inhaltliche Bestimmung des Guten (oder Schlechten) durch eine Ethik nicht zu leisten ist, sondern dass jedem zurechnungsfähigen Menschen die Bedeutung des Ausdrucks »gut« bereits praktisch bekannt ist und dass eine Ethik lediglich eine einleuchtende, kohärente und einfache Beschreibung des Bekannten leisten soll, an der man sich orientieren kann. [#752827]

English

1. Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried. [#1550]
2. The Italian language dies a little every time an anglophone orders "a panini". [#795923]
3. Mathematics is the part of science you could continue to do if you woke up tomorrow and discovered the universe was gone. [#1695]
4. The new Tatoeba website will use a home-made "hyper" database, a "made-from-scratch" search engine, and will run on a tatoebux-OS server with a tatoetel CPU made entirely out of tatoebium. [#786625]
5. When you're trying to prove something, it helps to know it's true. [#1740]
6. Tatoeba: Where attention to detail is sacred, and punishment is swift. [#481877]
7. Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed. [#1855]
8. Yoda's grammar learned you have. [#527321]
9. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. [#552745]
10. Does a Roman cat have a Roman meow? [#800683]
11. I am the last remaining worshipper of the goddess Demeter. [#810862]
12. Prime numbers are like life, they are completely logical, but impossible to find the rules for, even if you spend all your time thinking about it. [#1844]
13. What happens when an unstoppable force hits an unmovable object? [#704435]
14. The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. [#2285]
15. Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude. [#531715]
16. The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. [#667970]
17. Do we exist? [#803702]
18. I killed God. [#811617]
19. Something must be wrong with the machinery. [#38216]
20. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. [#349900]
21. Trolling is a art. [#653143]
22. I know that I know it, but I can't remember it. [#809257]
23. I would love to write hundreds of sentences on Tatoeba but I've got things to do. [#357919]
24. Dima slept with 25 men in one night and then killed them. [#477989]
25. Americans call it the Vietnam War; the Vietnamese call it the American War. [#799288]
26. I can’t stand panties. [#809845]

Français

1. Est-ce que tu savais que les hommes qui prennent régulièrement la pilule ne tombent pas enceints ? [#6071]
2. La démocratie est la pire forme de gouvernement, mis à part toutes les autres que l'on a essayées. [#3367]
3. Coq qui chante sur le fumier, temps qui va ou pas s'altérer. [#552318]
4. Le réel problème n'est pas de savoir si les machines pensent mais si les hommes le font. [#4130]
5. Pour parler à la biche, point n'est besoin de porter des bois. [#593886]
6. Troller est une art. [#655113]
7. Cette phrase n'a pas de sens. [#180967]
8. Les mathématiques sont la partie des sciences qu'on pourrait continuer à faire si on se réveillait demain et découvrait que l'univers avait disparu. [#3515]
9. Fermier qui gît, plus il ne vit. [#552356]
10. Je sais que tu penses avoir compris ce que tu pensais que j'avais dit, mais je ne suis pas sûr que tu as réalisé que ce que tu as entendu n'est pas ce que je voulais dire. [#336701]
11. En écrasant bien les angles droits d'un carré on peut obtenir un patatoïde. [#695491]
12. Votre attitude, non votre aptitude, détermine votre altitude. [#663681]
13. Ce politicien est un digne représentant de la gauche caviar. [#432757]
14. On ne se marie pas avec quelqu'un avec qui on peut vivre - on se marie avec la personne sans qui on ne peut pas vivre. [#3677]
15. Pluie en mai, avril était. [#553214]
16. Dima coucha avec 25 hommes en une seule nuit, puis les tua. [#480038]
17. Je trouve que le lexique de Tatoeba manque furieusement de sexe. [#518038]
18. Il faut de la sagesse pour comprendre la sagesse : la musique n'est rien si l'audience est sourde. [#3682]
19. Quand les vaches volent au ciel, elles semblent moins naturelles. [#591193]
20. La grammaire par Yoda apprise tu as ! [#527319]

Tatoeba day #4 - Inspiring sentences

中文

1. 我们只能知道过去，并不能改变。我们只能改变未来，却不能预知。 [#501713]
2. 赠与比接受更让人觉得幸福。 [#787202]
3. 报纸可以阻碍我们对世界的看法。 [#805063]
4. 如果两个人总是意见相同，那么他们其中一个就没用了。 [#502846]
5. 拥有一切的人可能会失去一切。 [#796651]
6. 每天读一些没有人读的东西。每天想一些没有人想的东西。每天做一些没有人会傻到去做的事。一直和别人保持一致对头脑有害。 [#810759]
7. 当我们明白真正的自己时，生活开始了。 [#503077]
8. 通往地狱之路是由好的意图铺砌而成的。 [#797526]
9. 得不到的比你所拥有的更好。 [#503080]
10. 世界就像一本书，不旅游的人只读了一页。 [#804867]

Deutsch

1. Nachdem er sich nie für Physik interessiert hatte, hörte er mir nicht zu, als ich ihm das Gravitationsgesetz erklärte, sondern breitete seine Arme aus und flog mit einem letzten Augenzwinkern bevor er am Horizont verschwand davon. [#570161]
2. Je nach ehemaligen, jetzigen und sich andeutenden gesellschaftlichen Gegebenheiten ist jeder mal ewig-gestrig, konservativ oder progressiv. [#809832]
3. Unterrichten ist Lernen. [#659706]
4. Gott?! Ich lasse mein Leben doch nicht von einer Arbeitshypothese bestimmen! [#809836]
5. Ich traf einmal in einer Schule einen Jungen von mittlerer Statur, der einen kleineren Jungen schlug. Ich ermahnte ihn, aber er antwortete: "Die Großen schlagen mich, deshalb schlage ich die Kleinen. Das ist gerecht." Mit diesen Worten fasste er die ganze Menschheitsgeschichte zusammen. [#719785]
6. Ich habe Gott getötet. [#811613]
7. Du hast Mundgeruch. [#392851]
8. Ich erinnere mich an die Zeit, als die Deutschen den Euro "Esperantogeld" nannten, um auszudrücken, dass er nie Wirklichkeit werden würde. Natürlich würde keiner von denen, die das damals sagten, es heute zugeben. Das haben Paradigmen so an sich, dass sie so natürlich zu sein scheinen, dass man sich nicht vorstellen kann, jemals vorher unter anderen Paradigmen, ja sogar gegensätzlichen, gelebt zu haben. [#791877]
9. Sein Versuch, Pudding an die Wand zu nageln, war endlich geglückt. [#812557]
10. Lest jeden Tag etwas, das sonst niemand liest. Denkt jeden Tag etwas, das sonst niemand denkt. Macht jeden Tag etwas, für das sonst niemand anders dumm genug wäre, es zu tun. Es ist schädlich für den Geist, immer im Einklang zu leben. [#501932]

English

1. The past can only be known, not changed. The future can only be changed, not known. [#1744]
2. If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. [#2268]
3. The only useful answers are those that raise new questions. [#1581]
4. Everything is theoretically impossible until it's done. [#2276]
5. Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. [#667922]
6. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. [#2289]
7. To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. [#1634]
8. Any universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind able to understand it. [#1747]
9. The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. [#2287]
10. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. [#667965]
11. Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried. [#1550]
12. Install Linux! [#799919]
13. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. [#30951]
14. My hobby: inventing irregular forms of verbs. [#812390]
15. We don't live in countries, we live in our languages. That is your home, there and nowhere else. [#460312]
16. Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude. [#531715]
17. If we were supposed to talk more than listen, we would have been given two mouths and one ear. [#667974]
18. He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. [#667973]
19. There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. [#1856]
20. Spread the word! [#801242]
21. Miracles are called miracles because they don't happen! [#366922]
22. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. [#483350]
23. Whenever I'm feeling pessimistic about the future of the world, I just think of how much has changed even in the time that I can remember. [#811790]
24. The only way on Earth to multiply happiness is to divide it. [#2273]
25. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. [#411071]
26. The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. [#667975]
27. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it. [#2137]
28. An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way. [#806441]
29. Save a human. Eat a cannibal. [#451569]
30. We are all stupid, just on different subjects. [#667947]
31. What changes the world is communication, not information. [#1741]
32. That is not art. That is a vagina with teeth. [#794580]
33. The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. [#2259]
34. If you put your mind into the fleshlight, your mind becomes the fleshlight. [#810743]
35. The warrior is conscious of both his strength and his weakness. [#45742]
36. If a sick person folds one thousand paper cranes, her wish will come true. [#30628]
37. The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. [#667970]

Français

1. Les seules réponses utiles sont celles qui posent de nouvelles questions. [#3398]
2. La seule manière sur Terre de multiplier le bonheur est de le diviser. [#4118]
3. On ne peut pas accomplir l'impossible sans tenter l'absurde. [#4196]
4. La vie n'est pas longue, elle est large ! [#4005]
5. La Bible nous dit d'aimer nos voisins, et aussi d'aimer nos ennemis ; probablement parce qu'ils s'agit en général des mêmes personnes. [#416182]
6. Ce qui change le monde, c'est la communication, pas l'information. [#3561]
7. Seuls ceux qui se risqueront à aller trop loin saurons jusqu'où on peut aller. [#4127]
8. Lorsque nous cherchons à découvrir le meilleur des autres, nous faisons ressortir quelque part le meilleur de nous-mêmes. [#4364]
9. Nous sommes ce que nous prétendons être, donc il nous faut faire attention à ce que nous prétendons être. [#4172]
10. L'âme est la prison du corps. [#426670]
11. On ne peut que connaître le passé, pas le changer. On ne peut que changer le futur, pas le connaître. [#3564]
12. Le monde est un livre, et ceux qui ne voyagent pas ne lisent qu'une seule page. [#4132]
13. Muiriel a 20 ans maintenant. [#3097]
14. Si vous prêtez 20$ à quelqu'un et que vous ne revoyez plus jamais cette personne, ça valait probablement le coup. [#4195]
15. Quand un philosophe me répond, je ne comprends plus ma question. [#438774]
16. Si seulement on arrêtait d'essayer d'être heureux on pourrait passer un très bon moment. [#4111]
17. La meilleure façon de prédire l'avenir est de l'inventer. [#4135]
18. Notre opinion est une idée que nous avons ; notre conviction, une idée qui nous a. [#3697]
19. Un paresseux est un homme qui ne fait pas semblant de travailler. [#414139]
20. Le grillon en cage dévore autant que le grillon en liberté. [#582693]

Tatoeba day #4 - Funny sentences

Deutsch

1. Du solltest mit dem Rauchen aufhören. [#396588]
2. Durch die Blume gesagt: Verdufte! [#795808]
3. Wenn ich gut zeichnen könnte, würde ich Bilder im Stil von "Wo ist Walter?" malen, aber Walter weglassen. [#812497]
4. Ihr Profil: Sie haben Ihr Studium der Betriebswirtschaften, der Wirtschaftsinformatik oder idealerweise mit dem Leben abgeschlossen. [#610363]
5. Die "Kunst der Fuge" ist kein Lehrbuch für Klempner. [#808985]
6. Ich bin das Fliegende Spaghettimonster. Du sollst vor Mir nichts mit anderen Monstern haben. (Hinterher ist OK; schütz dich einfach.) Das einzige Monster, das Großschreibung verdient, bin Ich! Andere Monster sind falsche Monster und verdienen keine Großschreibung. [#786661]
7. Die giftigsten Schlangen sind die, in die sich jemand hineingedrängelt hat. [#809842]
8. Tatsächlich ist ein halbes Auge sehr nützlich, denn mit einem halben Auge kann ein Tier die Hälfte von einem anderen Tier sehen, das es auffressen will, und ihm aus dem Weg gehen, und es wird selber das Tier fressen, das nur ein Drittel-Auge oder nur 49% eines Auges hat, weil dieses ihm nicht schnell genug aus dem Weg gehen wird, und das Tier, das aufgefressen wurde, wird keine Kinder bekommen, weil es tot ist. [#653]
9. Als Schüler war er sozusagen süchtig nach Schwänzen. [#793438]
10. Er spricht englisch. [#811502]

English

1. When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old. [#667976]
2. We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience. [#2343]
3. Forecasting is the way of saying what will happen and then explaining why it didn't. [#361147]
4. Christopher Columbus's infinite accomplishments are a threat to Google, who do not know how to index infinity when someone searches for "Christopher Columbus". [#536623]
5. Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. [#502597]
6. Save a human. Eat a cannibal. [#451569]
7. When an average person sends a message in a bottle, it's just a childish fantasy. When Christopher Columbus sends a message in a bottle, the fate of an entire country is at stake. [#549245]
8. Do you think that Spermophilus predators have night vision? [#795947]
9. The Romans would never have had the chance to conquer the world if they had first been required to study Latin. [#800888]
10. In Soviet Russia, sentence writes you! [#478089]
11. Numerous violent and sudden casualties among C++ developers are caused by segmentation faults every year. [#708101]
12. Tatoeba: Where sentences are always sentences, except when they aren't. [#451893]
13. There are three different types of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't. [#539572]
14. From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. [#502598]
15. Trolling is a art. [#653143]
16. Christopher Columbus was notorious for repeatedly snoozing his alarm clock by hitting it with his fist. Unfortunately, his "alarm clock" was usually his first mate. [#551085]
17. If you discover any problems on Tatoeba, you should go ahead and blame Sysko. [#797530]
18. I think I spider. [#804809]
19. Christopher Columbus once landed on the moon, but mistook it for Antarctica. [#537226]
20. "Why are you duct-taping that cheeseburger to the wall?" "It's a form of art." [#793380]
21. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. [#1854]
22. The world follows one golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules. [#502380]
23. Eat a live frog every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day [#667964]
24. Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty lady is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. [#509746]
25. A carcase is not a box for a motorized vehicle. [#794370]
26. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. [#552745]
27. Learning Klingon will be of great use for his career as a businessman. [#798039]
28. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. [#349900]
29. With his crew stranded at sea, Christopher Columbus was able to save them from starvation by pulling 100 rabbits out of his hat. [#538857]
30. Tatoeba: Don't cum here on Friday nights, kids. [#518410]
31. It is true that behavior cannot be legislated, and legislation cannot make you love me, but legislation can restrain you from lynching me, and I think that is kind of important. [#414158]
32. An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex. [#690971]
33. Christopher Columbus once cut himself with a knife. It made him so angry that he then cut the knife... with himself. [#545957]
34. You must absolutely not lick the floor. [#794934]
35. Lola the cow, Lola the cow, she's smart and she brings trouble, and she goes mooooo. [#707430]
36. Come on, baby, fight my liar! [#798379]
37. Minnesota's state bird is the mosquito. [#418525]
38. For some strange reason I talk to me dogs with an Irish accent. [#663035]

Français

1. Quand on commence à ressembler à la photo de son passeport, on devrait partir en vacances. [#3368]
2. Se taire en classe c'est respecter le sommeil des autres. [#4199]
3. C'est ainsi que Pandark se perdit dans sa chambre et on ne le revit plus jamais. Certains disent qu'il est mort de faim, d'autres qu'il erre encore à la recherche de ses CDs. [#690203]
4. Si vous prêtez 20$ à quelqu'un et que vous ne revoyez plus jamais cette personne, ça valait probablement le coup. [#4195]
5. La logique est une méthode systématique pour arriver à la mauvaise conclusion en toute confiance. [#4200]
6. Bière qui coule, ramasse ta mousse. [#780195]
7. Le meilleur moyen de prendre un train à l'heure, c'est de s'arranger pour rater le précédent. [#4197]
8. Si vous pensez que l'éducation coûte cher, attendez de voir ce que l'ignorance vous coûte. [#4229]
9. Il ne faut compter que sur soi-même. Et encore, pas beaucoup. [#4198]
10. Quand un philosophe me répond, je ne comprends plus ma question. [#438774]

Lojban

1. .o'i mu xagji sofybakni cu zvati le purdi [#635831]
2. ta ba'o cribe .i ta cribe pesxu [#780345]
3. xu lo mlatu pe la romas. latmo latcmo [#798005]
4. pau je'i xu ki'a cu'e mo fi'a xo ma pei [#812842]
5. na nei [#663940]
6. le tadji cu palci [#781428]
7. lo celxa'i na catra lo prenu .i lo prenu cu catra lo prenu [#766568]
8. zgikrxumpa ko [#791197]
9. ie do mi prami [#779051]
10. .a'u mu'i ma do latcmo [#797889]

Español

1. Una vez, Cristóbal Colón se cortó con un cuchillo. Esto le enfadó tanto que entonces cortó el cuchillo...con su propio cuerpo. [#546622]
2. Cuando estés enfadado, cuenta hasta cuatro. Cuando estés muy enfadado, maldice. [#668528]
3. Cristóbal Colón peleó una vez contra Cancerbero, el guardián de tres cabezas del inframundo, con nada más que su sombrero. [#536619]
4. Soy el Monstruo del Espagueti Volante. No adorarás a otros monstruos antes que a Mí. (Después está bien, sólo usa protección). ¡El único monstruo que merece ir con mayúscula soy Yo! Los otros monstruos son monstruos falsos, que no merecen ir con mayúscula. [#598096]
5. Un rectángulo es un cuadrado de lados desiguales dos a dos. [#703894]
6. Con su tripulación varada en el mar, Cristóbal Colón fue capaz de salvarles de morir de inanición al sacar 100 conejos de su sombrero. [#538858]
7. Hasta ahora no sabía para qué se había creado la eternidad. Es para darnos a algunos de nosotros una oportunidad para aprender alemán. [#627869]
8. Cualquier hombre capaz de conducir con prudencia mientras besa a una chica guapa simplemente no está prestando tanta atención al beso como éste merece. [#812889]
9. Nadie que haya llamado a Cristóbal Colón "Cris" ha vivido para hacerlo una segunda vez. [#538862]
10. Cómete una rana viva cada mañana, y no te pasará nada peor durante el resto del día. [#668522]

Tatoeba day #4 - Results

Tatoeba day #4 was about exploration. The idea was to hunt for the "best" sentences in the corpus. I had defined 3 categories: funny sentences, inspiring sentences and other sentences. Participants were asked to create lists of precisely 10 sentences in a same language. It was not required to create a list for each category. It was possible to create 2 lists of a same category but different languages.

Other than me, 5 people submitted lists: BraveSentry, fucongcong, Muiriel, Shishir and Zifre. I would like to thank them for their exploration efforts! There was a total of 23 lists created. I will publish here the stats about owners of the funny/inspiring/other sentences that were listed.

NOTE 1: The score indicated in the parenthesis does not represent the number of sentences, but the number of "votes". A member receives 1 vote whenever one of their sentences has been listed. So if someone had 1 sentence listed 3 times, they would have 3 votes.

NOTE 2: The ownership of the sentences can change over time so the score indicated here is only valid at the time it was calculated.

Owners of funny sentences

List of sentences: http://blog.tatoeba.org/2011/03/tatoeba-day-4-funny-sentences.html

1. Shishir (11)
   
2. BraveSentry (11)
3. FeuDRenais (9)
4. Zifre (8)
5. TRANG (6)
6. CK (3)
7. xeklat (3)
8. MUIRIEL (3)
9. sacredceltic (2)
10. saeb (2)
11. Scott (2)
12. - (2)
13. U2FS (2)
14. jerom (1)
15. papabear (1)
16. qdii (1)
17. Hans_Adler (1)
18. lorx (1)
19. deniko (1)
20. darinmex (1)
21. blay_paul (1)
22. human600 (1)
23. xtofu80 (1)
24. kurisutofu (1)
25. tomkun01 (1)
26. tijlan (1)
27. pandark (1)
28. eS (1)
29. Guybrush88 (1)

Owners of inpisring sentences

List of sentences: http://blog.tatoeba.org/2011/03/tatoeba-day-4-inspiring-sentences.html

1. TRANG (11)
2. CK (10)
3. fucongcong (10)
4. Zifre (9)
5. BraveSentry (7)
6. Guybrush88 (6)
7. Scott (5)
8. Dejo (5)
9. Swift (4)
10. MUIRIEL (3)
11. Esperantostern (2)
12. le_petit_ane_gris (2)
13. arcticmonkey (2)
14. saeb (2)
15. sacredceltic (1)
16. jeanne (1)
17. jakov (1)
18. darinmex (1)
19. xtofu80 (1)
20. U2FS (1)
21. ANH_DAO (1)
22. blay_paul (1)
23. - (1)
24. jerom (1)
25. SUZIE (1)
26. pandark (1)

Owners of other sentences

List of sentences: http://blog.tatoeba.org/2011/03/tatoeba-day-4-other-sentences.html

1. BraveSentry (11)
2. Zifre (8)
3. sacredceltic (5)
4. FeuDRenais (4)
5. TRANG (3)
6. kurisutofu (2)
7. Guybrush88 (2)
8. sysko (2)
9. Swift (2)
10. Goofy (2)
11. saeb (2)
12. U2FS (1)
13. MUIRIEL (1)
14. deniko (1)
15. Romira (1)
16. darinmex (1)
17. Clavain (1)
18. CK (1)
19. le_petit_ane_gris (1)
20. human600 (1)
21. trotter (1)
22. papabear (1)
23. lugal (1)
24. arcticmonkey (1)
25. Demetrius (1)
26. Snout (1)
27. Dejo (1)
28. xeklat (1)