So today I came upon this sentence:
"她是一个美丽的少女"

translated as
"She is a bonny lass"

Anyway I think it's hilarious but it got me wondering about where these sentences come from? Who translates them?

They're from dict.cn (we think). See some more funny ones here: http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=50258990

We're in the process of upgrading the example sentence system, and we'll have a lot of new sentences then, and also the ability for users to create, edit, rank, and study sentences: http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=237660198

This is where I find the Pleco integration really helpful, since the first thing I do when Skritter shows me a new word is follow the link out to Pleco and read the example sentences in PLC and ABC dictionaries. Both are very well done. Perhaps you can leverage this content.

Where do you access these PLC and ABC dictionaries from? I have been using a website called www.nciku.com for my example sentences but have found that many words are not in their database and many of their example sentences aren't all that helpful to study. Are these dictionaries bundled inside Pleco on your iphone?

@小山, The dictionaries are bundled inside Pleco. If I'm not mistaken the ABC dictionary is a downloadable option (you gotta pay). If you are on the web version of Skritter you might wanna check out Jukuu for sample sentences. Gives you a ton of options and English translations.

http://jukuu.com/

ABC is a paid add-on, yes. Though it's actually not all that heavy on example sentences - I believe about 10,000 in a 200,000 entry dictionary; it's more about breadth than depth.

PLC is free and built into our app - it's actually the same C-E dictionary that nciku uses, though, so the example sentences are mostly quite similar. (though we're working on getting our hands on a newer edition of that dictionary with nicer examples, and we've also hired someone in China to rewrite some of the more troublesome ones for us)

We also offer CC-CEDICT as a free add-on download, which should fill in most of the vocabulary gaps.

TL (Tuttle) is a great dictionary for example sentences I think on Pleco.