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Contributing in a language that is not your strongest

Please write sentences that do the most for Tatoeba, as well as for yourself. Generally, this means writing in your native (strongest) language. There is no rule against writing sentences in other languages that you know well, but please follow these guidelines to make sure not to overwhelm the site with more incorrect sentences than we can fix. When writing sentences in a language that is not your strongest:

(1) Do not use machine translators (such as Google Translate), which often produce bad translations.

(2) Translate the sentences into your strongest language, or make sure they are linked to existing translations. This will build a bridge between languages, and it will help other members understand the sentences in case they need to be corrected.

(3) Check your non-native sentences regularly to see whether anyone has written comments on them, and respond accordingly. If you see that you've made a lot of mistakes, write fewer sentences and find some way to check them more carefully.

(4) Avoid writing lots of similar sentences. For instance, avoid writing sets of more than three non-native sentences where the only difference is in the pronoun:

  • "I went to the beach."
  • "You went to the beach."
  • "He went to the beach."
  • "She went to the beach."

and so on. Not only does writing a large number of similar sentences undermine diversity, and make the site more boring, but if you're a non-native speaker, there is a significant chance that you will repeat the same mistake in all of them, which makes them painful to correct.

(5) Don't try to push the boundaries of the language. If you discover that 80% of native speakers contain a particular usage an error, then don't use it, even if you find a blog post somewhere that claims that it should be considered correct.

(6) Use a standard dialect of the language. Sentences in nonstandard dialects are much harder to get right.

(7) If you're an advanced contributor, use the tag "@needs native check", especially when you're not sure whether the sentence is correct. (Note: do not use "@NNC" or "NNC". Sentences with "@needs native check" and "@check" are special because they are listed on a particular page that corpus maintainers check frequently.) If you're not an advanced contributor, consider applying to become one.

(8) Consider finding a native speaker to review your sentences, particularly the ones you're not sure about.

(9) If you must translate into a non-native language, then at least translate from your native language.

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