Can we edit, annotate or remove Example Sentences?

Bunpro
#1

I’m new-ish to Bunpro, and I love it so far

I’m wondering if there’s a way to edit example sentences, and if I can’t edit them, then some way to add notations to them which I can pull up when they appear in reviews, or remove them from review entirely?

Bunpro seems to have a lot of customization option (including adding custom self-study sentences or synonyms) so I thought one of these features might exist in a way I haven’t found yet.

I’d like to change some sentences that use common hint words so I stop putting in the wrong word the first time. I know I can make words synonyms, but in many case the words are only synonyms in some instances, and I’d rather clarify the sentences and test the proper word than allow the other word to be accepted.

The extra time it takes me to figure out what is meant by “really” or others in a specific translation definitely adds up. I’d rather just alter the sentence translation to use “very”, “extremely”, “particularly”, etc. as the sentence could’ve been translated that way anyway

If edits, annotations, or removal of example sentences aren’t currently features, I’d like to request any of them be implemented at some point. I think they’d make the product even better

4 Likes
#2

As soon as I posted this I ran into a another instance where I need this feature during my reviews, so I figured I’d post a specific example

I just hit this review sentence:

今度の引越しの際に必要のない____を処分しようと思う

I understood the sentence and figured (goods/things/items) belongs in the blank, so I clicked “hint”
The hint for this sentence was “items”
so I immediately filled the blank with もの

Not only was もの not the proper answer here, but because もの is contained within the proper answer, しなもの, Bunpro showed me the whole word with しな highlighted in green

According to Gemini, using もの or しなもの in this sentences would mean basically the same thing, so either would be correct

Now I have the option of marking this review correct and moving on, without actually testing myself on the word しなもの, (which I don’t know as well as もの, considering I didn’t think of it first, so I need to study it more) or I can mark it wrong so it appears again later and penalizes me (I use negative points and light ghosts), even though I probably would’ve figured it out had I been able to guess a second time without Bunpro telling me しなもの was the answer.

And when I see this sentence again in a week or two, I’m likely to have forgotten the specific Japanese word for “item” it wants, so I’m likely to use もの again

If I could annotate or edit this sentence, I would not want to remove the term “item”.
One of the things I like about Bunpro is that it does force me to think about the nuance of synonyms, and the fact that each Japanese word doesn’t mean a specific English word, rather it encapsulates a fuzzy ‘idea’ that many English words can also represent.
I’d likely annotate this specific sentence in some way such as “item (tangible good)”, which differentiates しなもの for me personally in the future.
This way, every time I see the hint, I’ll be reminded of why しなもの might be a better fit here

Bunpro already does this for us with the yellow text in some instances, but it seems like it would be too much work for the Bunpro staff to anticipate every confusing hint customers might run into

I’m only on early N4 vocab right now, I imagine this problem will exacerbate as I learn more synonyms going forward

Allowing us to annotate these sentences ourselves would allow us to work around ambiguous hints in ways that work for us

1 Like
#3

We are currently trying to solve this issue of alternate / acceptable answers ourselves, via answering feedback and adding new alternatives as they are suggested through user Feedback

  • Pros – Because we have native Japanese staff monitoring the feedback and what is being added as acceptable/alternative/incorrect, you can be sure that any official alternate is accurate.
  • Cons – Adding manual feedback is tedious, and staff can often not get to every single feedback

We have also discussed a Community Hints / Community Notes project, where you could upload your own hints and notes and share them among the community.
This sounds more like what you are after.

For now the only thing I can suggest is adding details regarding your findings for each Vocab as Notes.
If you think a question has a reasonable alternate (e.g. your 物／品物 example), suggesting it using our report feature also means there is a fair chance it will be picked up and added officially.

(FYI “Synonyms” are only for the JA → EN translation questions, not the fill-in-the-blank style ones!)

EDIT: I also spoke to another team member about this:
A big thorough sweep to add alternates for every Vocab is also actually in the pipeline.
It will be a while before we get to it, but the unconsidered-alternate-answer problem is slowly but surely getting handled!