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::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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[–] FUCKRedditMods@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Us common folks may not have flying cars or jetpacks yet but this shit is pretty dope.

[–] TheFrirish@jlai.lu 1 points 1 year ago

that's really good news even though I don't use firefox anymore (sorry vivaldi user) I'm glad firefox is actually improving.

[–] wesley@yall.theatl.social 10 points 1 year ago

I'm guessing this isn't on mobile yet?

The number of languages available is pretty small but I do appreciate them trying to respect users privacy with this feature

[–] jman6495@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Glad to see this has made it into the browser! This has been a 🇪🇺 funded project for years now!

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago

This was prieviously available as an addon/extension. It's really cool they are able to do this locally, and it works well.

[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

It has multiple translation providers to choose from, but only shows the logo and not a name. I have no idea what the logos are except google translate

I’ve been using for a few months. Here is my opinion:

  • Translation quality is still far from good, but is good enought to be understandable.
  • Can’t translate PDF files (hope it could do it in the future, even if that mean reflowing it)
  • The extension allowed to keep translating this tab. That’s a future that, in my opinion, would be highly appreciated in the built-in translator (instead of enabling the "always translate").
  • The language choice doesn’t correspond with what I usually need (which is chinese. But I know chinese is notably hard to translate.)
  • It seems that translation into french first goes thought a first pass of english translation. While this still produce readable result, targeting english is for now probably the best option (even thought the cost of implementing a new language translation pair doesn’t seems too high, I understand they might prioritise adding more language, at least for now. Actually, I should probably contribute to this myself if I care as much about it)
[–] dzso@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I've been disappointed with Orion and Safari lately. Not ready to switch to Chrome, but maybe it's time to give Firefox another shot.

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Last time I checked online translators were as shit as 10 years, so I wonder how well this works.

[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Haha oh wow

Well then you should check out:

Translate.google.com

And

DeepL

[–] MadBob@feddit.nl 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do people actually rate Google Translate that well? I've always found it lacking, but then I don't use it anywhere near habitually.

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

It's always gotten the job done for me. /shrug 🤷

[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This was the last thing I actively used chrome for, time to fully switch over I guess now that I can translate my Russian tracker.

[–] firadin@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still use Chrome when I need to Chromecast, any way around that?

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

This works, but it's definitely a beta product, and not release quality...

Add Chromecast support to Firefox with Fx_cast extension

[–] Faresh@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

How will this offline translator affect Firefox's memory usage? The article mentioned that it currently only supports 9 languages. If I choose a source language will it be able to translate to all other 8 languages? Why didn't they use existing open-source software like Apertium (or did they?)?

[–] AndreTelevise@lemm.ee -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's really neat IMO. It should've been there earlier

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

Sure. We should have had smart phones in the 80s.

And electric cars too.