I really like Firefox. I have absolutely no performance issues and made very good use of the possibilities that come with the ability to use custom css and lots of extensions.
Recently I have had to repeatedly make use of the translation feature that's built-in with Edge
Is there a similar feature on the way? Are there any reasonable alternatives, even if just extensions that translate the whole page?
Posted Sep 10, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC
It's apparently available in Firefox Nightly by going to about:config and setting extensions.translations.disabled to false. I don't know if or when it will make its way to regular Firefox, though. You can find more info by searching the web for "Firefox offline translation"
Well I checked that about and it certainly seems interesting!
As far as I can see the project...
a) is not close to being a finished product. Only a few translations (language a -> language b) are possible, and the earliest publications are already two years old
b) focuses more on being a non-cloud based (and thus dependant on a separate server and an internet connection) translation engine than being a firefox feature
Does not seem like a viable alternative just yet. Though I really like how translations will not need to go through Google's or Microsoft's servers in the future
focuses more on being a non-cloud based (and thus dependant on a separate server and an internet connection) translation engine than being a firefox feature
That is confusing, how is it not a Firefox feature if it is happening locally?
As far as I can tell its supposed to be a whole translation engine and not (just) a Firefox feature
Currently the only way to use it is through a firefox extension with limited features.
check out the official website! I havent spent much time on looking at the project either :)
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There is an extension with this feature and even more, it's called Mate Translate
But the catch is they are collect some data on you https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instant-translate/privacy/
That why I disable it and enable it when I need it, I used it when try to read some Japanese or Chinese articles.
I think I have actually used this one in the past. I dont specifically remember but I think I had some issues with UI or popups doing something I didn't want them to or being visible at times they didn't need to.
Its definitely been a long time since I last used it so maybe they fixed that stuff. Will check out!
You can disable features separately. I just tested it and disabled all but Full-page translation feature and all popups gone. the only thing active is a small Mate icon in the top right corner if the web page is in a foreign language.
small Mate icon in the top right corner
well this probably was the issue.
Maybe I can manage to remove that. If theres a pro plan I assume its not open source?
well this probably was the issue.
You can remove it if you disable Full-page translation feature but then you can't translate the whole page and will resort to translate a selected text only.
No it's not open source
Can you please elaborate who the icon was an issue to you? I checked it and it was a 24px × 24px in size.
I was able to make it even smaller [10px × 10px] by editing CSS file of the extension and side-loaded it using the debug mode and it worked. though I don't how how to permanently install unsigned extension because I'm not an extension developer, but I heard you can do that though you may want to make a another post here for this
You can try Deepl's app. Works so well you might not need browser translation.
I don't fully understand.
Is this a dedicated application? I do want the translation to happen inside the browser, without the need to open another webpage or application.
I have heard of deepl though. If what you meant fit my usecase I would definitely give it a try!
That's the cool thing, you can just select and use a shortcut or other ways and it opens up a popup with the translation right there, so it acts like a part of the browser or any app for that matter. As a bonus, it's not Google and some say the translation is even better than Google's.
Oh then it seems to fit my usecase exactly.
I thought you meant an application outside of the browser environment (as in I open another window and the copy/paste text over)
It is an app, but you don't need to do any of that extra work. Anyway, give it a go 👌
I just found this addon
In my brief testing it seems to work really well. I'm going to keep it