I use the German-Chinese option for Skritter, so part of the words in my vocab lists are in German, the others in English. I noticed that I can choose the language (English or German) if I add a new word to the dictionary. But if the word is already in the dictionary, but only lacking the definition, I can't choose, but it seems that Skritter assumes I will always put a German definition. But honestly, I often just copy and paste the definition from nciku, unless it is something I really don't know in English, like 巧妇鸟 which means "wren" in English and "Zaunkönig" in German... I think it is a bit too troublesome to always change the language settings in the right corner for adding definitions in a certain language.

Could you please also offer the option to choose the language when you edit the definition. And is it possible to see, "in which" language a definition is, because I already added some definitions in English, until the Sentence "Add Deutsch definition" started to make me think about this problem...

You can add whatever definition you want, no matter what language you're set to.

However, if you're adding an English definition when set to German, perhaps just don't click the "submit as correction" box?

Ah, ok, so if I add a definition, only I can see it, as long as I don't press the "submit as correction" box?

But how can I specifically add a German definition then, if the word is already in the dictionary, but only with English definition? If I am in the German mode and write over the English definition and share as a correction, it will not delete the English definition, but only add the German definition to the dictionary? If so, then problem solved!

But that also means, if a word is in the dictionary but completely lacking definition, I should enter definition twice, right? Once in German mode and once in English mode, so others could also benefit from it...

Somehow I still think if it is possible to choose languages when adding new words to the dictionary, why not when adding definitions?

Gosh, I'm not sure about when it's not in the dictionary at all. I'd say don't worry about it, but I am aware that the Skritter lot is wanting to improve definitions in other languages. So perhaps they'd appreciate it.

Don't worry about definitions being overwritten with the wrong language. It's not automatic, someone will review corrections before making changes.

As for your last post, this is something I haven't seen working in English mode only!

I have been working a little bit on corrections in Spanish and I can imagine that it could be quite confusing for the people who review the corrections if someone submitted a definition in the "wrong" language (e.g. an English definition when they have their language set to German). The interface is set up in such a way that you can see all the corrections in the particular language you select; when you look at a word, the language you're working on sorts to the top. So two potential problems would be

a) I don't think your correction would show up if the person reviewing corrections searched only for English-language corrections (as your hypothetical correction would be labeled "German"). It would show up only if there were other English-language corrections for that word, but in that case the ones marked "English" would sort to the top.

b) if the person reviewing corrections in German were to see your correction, she might simply reject it. Or she might think "I'm not a native English speaker, I'm not qualified to review it" and leave it for someone else. However, due to problem a), it might never get reviewed.

James

Then again, if it's just verbatim from nciku, that it's rejected shouldn't really matter in this case. Right?

What Meihui suggests, makes a lot of sense. He is adding the definition, because the ENGLISH definition is missing (as well as the German), otherwise he would have been presented the English as default, if there is only the German missing. The stuff, he is adding, is quite on an advanced level, which is not easily found in a German-Chinese dictionary.
Therefore, it would be helpful,if we could select the language.
As I have been doing some reviews, I came across Meihui's definitions. I've rejected them, so that the German definitions are still in German and not bilingual. However, they will still stay there as Meihui's user specific definitions.
For the future, I will continue to do so, but at the same time copy paste the entry to the English dictionary.

I'll leave it to Scott to answer whether he wants to make a dropdown specifying which language the definition is in when adding that definition. We have some language autodetection code which runs when one puts in a definition on the practice page; perhaps it should run there, too.

In general, though, some corrections are going to get the wrong language tag. When reviewing corrections, it's easy (for me at least) to see, oh, that French one got into the English slot, and just move it around. Because of the way the language autodetection works, that happens sometimes on short definitions even when the person submitting is submitting a definition which is in accordance with their currently selected language. So it is something the ballers should watch out for when making corrections.

@ Roland
Ah, so you are the person, who is checking the German definitions? Ok, so how should I do it, if I come across a phrase that I neither can find in a German nor English dictionary. For instance I came across "华丽转身". I translated it with "großartige Kehrtwendung" (didn't add to Skritter yet) and my Chinese colleague found it ok, but know I think I could also say "tolle Verwandlung", "hervorragende Veränderung" and so on... Really often depends on the context. Shall I just enter something and let you decide whether the definition is ok or not? Or switch to Chinese mode and just enter the Chinese definition. But, then it won't show up, if I study in the German mode, right?

@Scott
Maybe it would be possible like this, that if there is no definition in the chosen languages and none in English, that the Chinese definition would show up. Longer phrases are often difficult to translate.

Well, I think from now on, I will try to be more careful and in the German mode only enter German and if I want to enter an English definition switch to English.

P.S.: I am a "she". ;-)

Meihui, sorry for the "he", I should have been more careful on this.
I'm not a sinologist nor did I ever study Chinese at university level. Learning Chinese is just my hobby and I am now living in China for 10 years already.
As a lot of the entries in HanDeDict (which is the basis for the German version of skritter) are problematic, I volunteered to put some extra work into it to get it improved.
What I normally do is to check the suggested corrections against German and English dictionaries. As you are entering quite sophisticated stuff, which I also couldn't find in any dictionary, I suggest, that you check out a proper translation and decide, what would be OK, I will then just accept your entry.
I assume, that you are on an advanced level already. Would be great, if you could also check during skrittering for wrong entries and correct them. Over time, this would really improve the quality and avoid, that people learn wrong things.
By the way, doing this, also helped me a lot in better understanding of quite some vocabulary, as I really have to think about it and not just quickly go through my reviews.

Roland, no problem, I should use Hanzi for my nick (美惠), than it would be more obvious... I just had another idea. Would it be ok, to add an explanation instead of a translation like "Wechsel der gesellschaftlichen Rolle einer Person. Dieser Rollenwechsel wird als positiv empfunden und von anderen befürwortet." Ok, maybe too long... "positiver Rollenwechsel"? Will discuss with my colleagues... (and my Chinese hubby)

Yes, I am on an advanced level (or so I hope). Right now I read a lot and often bump into some new expressions that haven't reached the dictionaries yet.

Right now I am teaching German in Shanghai, but I am considering to either work as a translator or become a schoolteacher for Chinese in Germany, so I always want to know the exact meaning of the words...

That's a good idea to add the dropdown when adding the definition. I've added it to my list of things to do.

Also, for you ballers I'll make it easy to change the language of a definition correction. Then we don't have to reject corrections marked wrong, they can just be passed off to other ballers.

@scott I just ran across a miscategorized correction in the Baller. It's under 罚款; the Spanish correction is actually Italian. I'll leave it for now, but could someone fix the language code on the backend?

James