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Exemple sentences

Kuini   March 16th, 2011 6:52a.m.

I just want to say that the exemple sentences are very complicated (and i'm not english so it's even more complicated). I mean even with simple words, the sentences managed to be so hard to understand.

I think you guys should add a feature so the users can share some exemples sentences, becauce i think it's also very important to know how to use a word and in what context.

Keep up the good work.

dfoxworthy   March 16th, 2011 8:46a.m.

Totally agreed! Often easy word's examples involve high level words I obvious wouldn't know yet. Half of the example are just down right strange and unpractical even in English. If I was learning those English phrases, I'd speak like an alien.

dfoxworthy   March 16th, 2011 8:56a.m.

In all fairness this is more ridiculous than most. But hopefully these can be fixed later.

如果請費爾南德斯走路,教育局可以付錢馬上終止合約,或是讓他做滿任期.費爾南德斯按規定可以在十九萬五的年薪之外,還可以領未用病假和其他福利折合現金四十萬元.

rúguǒ qǐng fèiěrnándésī zǒulù, jiàoyùjú kéyǐ fù qián mǎshàng zhōngzhǐ héyuē, huòshì ràng tā zuò mǎn rènqī. fèiěrnándésī àn guīdìng kéyǐ zài shíjiǔwànwǔ de niánxīn zhīwài, hái kéyǐ lǐng wèi yòng bìngjià hé qítā fúlì shéhé xiànjīn sìshíwàn yuán.

If Fernandez is shown the door, the board could either buy out his contract immediately or allow him to serve out his term. Fernandez is set to collect$400, 000 in past sick pay and other benefits on top of his$195, 000 salary.

scott   March 16th, 2011 12:55p.m.

This is on my list of things to do. At the same time that I set up Japanese example sentences, I'll be doing some upgrades to the system in general, like being able to add new sentences and choose among shared example sentences, like is done currently with mnemonics. The difficulty of the sentences we've got has been brought up a few times before as well, so will definitely have this in mind with the new system! These upgrades will be coming after the current run of vocab list upgrades is finished.

Ron B.   March 18th, 2011 12:58p.m.

折合 Makes more sense this way:
福利[fú lì] 折合[zhé hé] 現金[xiàn jīn] 四十[sì shí] 萬[wàn] 元[yuán] : 折合 convert into, amount to.

This is a bit tough, but I think the biggest problem is with transcribed names, like Fernandez.

Foo Choo Choon   March 18th, 2011 2:16p.m.

I love those sentences; in fact I've even memorized about 200-300 of them using Anki SRS + a few hundreds in cloze test format. So please don't delete them.

pts   March 18th, 2011 5:10p.m.

Some of the examples are gems. But that Fernandez’s one is a poor example of using 折合. It should use 代金 instead. I’d translate it as:
按規定費爾南德斯可以领取十九萬五的薪酬, 另加未用病假和其他福利代金四十萬元。

Maybe there should be a flagging system to warn us of those problematic ones.

breakphreak   March 19th, 2011 5:25a.m.

As I've noted on that earlier, it might be some parameter to adjust sentences complication/size/structure according to the level of a learning person, the percentage of known/unknown characters/words that appear in the sentence etc. The level might be a function of learned characters and retention rate. One spec in a single sentence :) but you probably get the idea and probably are boiling something better in your heads already :) if you'll need any guinea pig to whirlpool the feature (dry spec/wet test) - please count me in! :)

Foo Choo Choon   March 19th, 2011 2:34p.m.

Here's a funny one to share (unfortunately not from Skritter), exemplifying how some Chinese translators get it wrong:

Tourists descend in busloads...so the whole place is rather touristy.
许多游客前往巴斯崂兹……所以整个地区游客都很多。

(The translator thought "Tourists visit the location 'Busloads': 巴斯崂兹" and even used the nice 'touristy character' 崂)

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