Tatoeba: sentences in every language
An open, volunteer-built collection of sentences and their translations: millions of examples in hundreds of languages, many recorded by native speakers. Free and weirdly addictive.
What it is
Tatoeba is an open collection of sentences and their translations, built by volunteers around the world. The site describes itself as collaborative, open, free and even addictive, and that last part is fair. Every sentence links to its translations in other languages, and those link to their own translations, so a single phrase fans out into a whole tree. Some sentences come with audio, and the interface can be switched into many languages.
Why we picked it
A dictionary tells you what a word means but rarely shows how people actually use it. Tatoeba fills that gap: search for a word and you get dozens of real sentences using it, plus their translations. English has the most material by far, more than two million sentences, followed by Russian, Italian, Esperanto, Kabyle, German, Turkish and French.
It's clearly alive, too. New posts land on the community wall within the hour, and the IDs on fresh sentences have passed twelve million. And it isn't a company's product; it's a community. Anyone can sign up to add sentences, translations or recordings of their own voice.
Where to start
- Hit "Show random sentence" and see how many languages it's been translated into.
- Search for a word you're learning and pick a language pair.
- Browse the audio section to hear sentences read by native speakers.
- Look through the sentence lists that members put together by topic.
- If you speak a less common language, consider adding translations.
Who it's for
Language learners who want to see words in context, teachers who need example sentences for exercises, Esperanto fans and speakers of smaller languages, and developers looking for open language data.
Quick answers
Is it free? Yes, it's free and open. You only need an account to contribute.
How big is it? English alone has more than two million sentences, and many other languages have hundreds of thousands.
Are the translations reliable? They're added by volunteers, so mistakes happen. Each sentence shows who added it, and it's worth comparing a few examples.
