Tatoeba Sentence Corpus Scraper

Tatoeba Sentence Corpus Scraper

Scrape Tatoeba sentence pairs by language, search term, or tag, up to a million per run. Every sentence comes with its translation, language codes, and tag metadata. No API key or login. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Tatoeba's official API needs registration and rate-limits you. This reads the public sentence corpus directly, filtered by source language, target language, search term, or tag, and returns each match in one fixed schema.

Who uses it	What they scrape Tatoeba for
Language learners	Find example sentences for a word or phrase in their target language
NLP researchers	Build parallel corpora for machine translation training
Linguists	Analyze sentence structures and tag distributions across languages
App developers	Populate language learning apps with real usage examples

What it does

This Actor collects Tatoeba sentences and their translations by language pair, search query, or tag, and returns each one as a flat row.

• 🔍 Search term: filter sentences by a word or phrase, like 'hello'.
• 🌐 Language pair: choose source and target languages from 50+ options.
• 🏷️ Tag filter: narrow to proverbs, idioms, greetings, and more.
• 📊 Flat output: each sentence and its translation in one row, ready for analysis.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Tatoeba data

📚 Build a vocabulary deck.

A language learner scrapes 500 sentences containing 'hello' in English with Spanish translations, then imports them into Anki for study.

🤖 Train a translation model.

An NLP researcher collects 100,000 English-French sentence pairs tagged 'proverb' to fine-tune a machine translation system.

📱 Populate a language app.

A developer scrapes 10,000 Japanese sentences with English translations and 'greeting' tags to seed a flashcard app.

🔬 Analyze linguistic patterns.

A linguist gathers all Esperanto sentences with Latin translations to study grammatical structures across constructed languages.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	Scrape public Tatoeba data without registration or rate limits
Flexible filtering	Combine search, language pair, and tags to target exactly what you need
Scalable	Collect up to 1,000,000 sentences per run
Structured output	Get clean rows with sentence, translation, and metadata

How it compares

No other Store actor targets Tatoeba the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	Tatoeba Sentence Corpus Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When Tatoeba changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a search term, source language, target language, and tags, alone or together, and filters run as each sentence is read so only matches reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "query": "hello",
  "fromLanguage": "eng"
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "query": "hello",
  "fromLanguage": "eng"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.01333 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$1.33
1,000 results	$13.33
10,000 results	$133.30

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Tatoeba Sentence Corpus Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Tatoeba through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/tatoeba-sentence-corpus-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Your filters may be too restrictive. Try removing the tag or search term, or choose a more common language pair. Also check that the query is spelled correctly.

The run is taking too long.

Lower maxItems or narrow your filters. Scraping a million sentences with many translations can take time.

Some sentences are missing translations.

Not every sentence has a translation in your target language. Leave toLanguage empty to see all available translations, or choose a more common language.

I get an error about language codes.

Use the dropdowns to select languages; they provide valid ISO 639-3 codes. If you type a code manually, ensure it is in the list.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need a Tatoeba API key?	No. This Actor reads the public Tatoeba website directly, so no registration or key is required.
How many sentences can I scrape in one run?	You can set maxItems up to 1,000,000. The run stops when it reaches that number or no more matches exist.
Can I filter by both language and search term?	Yes. Set fromLanguage, toLanguage, and query together to get only sentences in that pair containing that term.
What are tags?	Tags are labels like 'proverb', 'idiom', or 'greeting' that Tatoeba users assign to sentences. Use the tags input to filter by them.
What languages are supported?	The fromLanguage and toLanguage dropdowns list 50+ languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Esperanto.
Can I get all translations for a sentence?	Yes. Leave toLanguage empty to return every available translation for each source sentence.
What output formats are available?	You can export the dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform.
Is the data live?	Yes, each run fetches the current public Tatoeba pages, so you get up-to-date sentences and translations.
Can I schedule regular scrapes?	Yes, use Apify's scheduler to run this Actor daily, weekly, or on any cron schedule.
What if I get no results?	Check your filters. A very specific query or rare tag may return nothing. Try broadening the search term or removing a filter.

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Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Tatoeba Project. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.