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How to request a new language to be added

NOTE: For the foreseeable future, we will only honor language requests by native speakers who are planning to add a substantial number of their own sentences directly to Tatoeba. The language must have an ISO 639-3 (three-letter) code. Each language added makes the process of selecting a language from the interface more difficult, so we only want to add languages that we expect to have a substantial presence on Tatoeba. In addition, we need to be able to verify that the sentences added are correct, which we cannot do without native speakers.

Do these 3 things

  1. Add 10 or more sentences in your language.

    • Use auto-detect when submitting sentences.

    • After submitting a sentence, click the flag icon and choose "other language."

  2. Create a list with the name of the language. Add your sentences to this list.

  3. Send an e-mail to team@tatoeba.org with the following information:

    • The name of the list that you created.

    • The name of the language in English.

    • An icon (a flag, or something else) that can be used for the language. You can send us either an image or a link to an image.

    • The 3-letter ISO code for the language. We only add languages that have a 3-letter ISO code.

More Details

1) IMPORTANT: We cannot add your language if it does not have an ISO 639-3 (three-letter) code. Two languages without ISO 639-3 codes were added before this policy was instituted, but we are not planning to add any more.

2) In your email, tell us what icon we can use for each requested language, or better yet, send it to us. You will save us the most work if it is already of the format we use in the system (30 pixels wide by 20 pixels high, of which the bottom and right edges should be a 1-pixel wide gray line, hex code DCDCDC), but that is not required. The icon does not necessarily have to be the flag of a country. We just want an uncopyrighted picture that people can easily associate with the language. Keep in mind that our icons are only 30x20 pixels.

3) Translate 10 sentences into your language(s). Choose auto-detect when selecting the language for the sentences. The language detection is likely to fail, but click on the language icon and select "other language" in the list that appears. (It's the first option.) After the new language is added to Tatoeba, you will be able to set it correctly for these sentences.

4) Create a public list and give it the name of your language. Add your 10 translations to that list. Feel free to translate more than 10 sentences, but always add them to the list, so that we can easily find them.

IMPORTANT: We will only add your language(s) if you have done all of this. Even so, it may take a while before the language is added.

Pending requests

You will find here the list of languages that have been requested but have not been added yet.

Don't hesitate to send us again a request if you do not see your request in the list, because we may have not received your request.

Feel free as well to send us a request even if someone else requested the language before you. The more people request a language and the higher priority it will be.

Procedure for developers

=> Adding a language in Tatoeba