this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023

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The Firefox browser now has a built-in page translator that works even without the Internet (gadgettendency.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

169 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The Firefox browser now has a built-in page translator that works even without the Internet::Mozilla has announced the release of an update to its Firefox browser. In version number 118, users will find a significant innovation - a built-in translator

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Only these languages though:

Bulgarian
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish

[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Still impressive

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but these websites are usually already localized in English at least to some extent. Many Asian websites would benefit much more from this.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

There's an edge case for Switzerland with 4 official languages but German being the majority. Many websites and documents "forget" to translate into other minority languages.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I need japanese, any news on if that will happen?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No news on that though AFAIK that's the most requested one. As other comment pointed out currently these languages are WIP:

Russian
Persian (Farsi)
Icelandic
Norwegian Nynorsk
Norwegian Bokmål
Ukrainian
Dutch

Personally I'd like to see more asian languages as that part of the web is lacking English but those languages are much harder to implement and all of this contribution here is mostly by European universities and organizations.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nynorsk supporters just never quit do they. Half the country wants it gone and less than 10 percent of the country uses it, still it's on the list while Swedish and Danish aren't, lmao.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

We already have one language.

Yes but what about a second language?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Me, too. I end up using TWP, and that works pretty well, minus the fact that it’s filtered through either Google Translate, Bing, Yandex or DeepL with an API key.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I really want something that just translates kanji/kana to romaji. There was an extension in Chrome that did that and it’s the only thing I miss after switching to FF.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

kanji/kana to romaji

Wow, I never knew that they had a Japanese to Romaji extension. Would furigana extensions work? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/furiganaize/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search

Yeah, furiganaize has an option to display as romaji. https://files.catbox.moe/ocjic8.png

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately it only works on Kanji (which is probably the hardest part, I guess if there's no alternative for kana there isn't enough demand?), but thanks!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (5 children)

That's really not good. Literally all of these are European languages.

I'd rather have it connected to a better translation service than have it be offline. I don't understand why the translator working offline is even a plus. It's a web browser.

I assume there must not be any FOSS translation services they can use so this offline translator is just a consequence of that.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It's for privacy purposes. An online translator requires that all the text you're reading be sent to a third party, which may or may not use it for nefarious purposes. E.g. maybe you translate your bank account's web page because there's a word you don't know, and now Google knows how much money you have in your bank account.

If you don't care about that kind of privacy, then there's no reason you couldn't use an existing online translator. Firefox has always supported that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That makes sense, thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That's fine for translating news articles, but maybe not for private email. Different people accept different risk levels in different situations. If you have reason to be using https then maybe you don't want to send that data to a third party.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

I'm sure they would be happy to accept your help in translating a new language.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Gets 5 free stuff and bitches for not getting 50. Some people...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah this is why I still use at least 1 Google Translate extension in addition to the FF one. Need my Chinese man