If you’re a Firefox user, you already know that one of the typical Chrome features that Mozilla’s web browser lacks is having a built-in translator to take care of its own. And this is, let’s not deny it, one of the accessibility features that is here to stay. That’s why you have to know Firefox Translationsif you don’t know her yet.
As you know, Chrome has its automatic translation feature, it is based on Google Translate and it works very well. And Firefox has its own: there are enough extensions for Firefox that are based on Google Translate or other translation services for the browser to enjoy this feature. In fact, the same is true for Chromium and Chrome: there are numerous translation extensions, including the official one from Google, which extends the default options of Chrome’s built-in translator.
But there are several alternative browsers to Chrome that prefer to offer their own solutions, instead of Google’s, as well as it works. For two reasons, mainly: competition and privacy. Thus, while Microsoft Edge includes a translation function based on Bing for competition reasons, Brave and Vivaldi do so for privacy reasons. What about Firefox? Well, after a long time, one can finally entrust oneself to…
Before the list of shifts appears saying that this has time, I’ll say it myself: Firefox Translations has been cooking for a long time… cooking in the Mozilla oven and being able to be tested in different ways, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that the plugin has started to take shape and what is better, to be able to be used with optimistic results.
I bring it up now because just last week, on the occasion of the launch of the new version of Brave, we were talking about its new integrated web page translator, in the purest style of Chrome, but respectful of user privacy. Vivaldi is a case apart, and it is that its translator was released more than a year ago and unlike the rest, it is more complete, since, like the Chrome extension, it allows you to translate text selections, integrates with the side panel… and although it feeds from an online service, it does so through the Vivaldi servers, respecting the user’s privacy.
But what about Firefox?, I repeat. Because you install Firefox, you go into the extensions store to look for something that does the trick and the first thing you come across is a bunch of extensions, a couple of them recommended by the same store, that work with Google Translate. And as good as these extensions are, they are also nothing extraordinary. If there is no alternative, still; but having it…
There is, yes: even though Firefox Translations is still in development and has many details to polish and many languages to add, for the average user it is ready and worth giving it a try. Right now the languages it supports for use in production are: Estonian Spanish, English, German, Czech, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Italian, French and Polish, while Russian, Persian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Ukrainian and Dutch are in process.
Firefox Translations
As for where Firefox Translations comes from, it does so by machine translation performed locally in the browser, so “it is not necessary to send the translations to the cloud”, they explain on the Bergamot website. For more data, “The Bergamot project implements free client-side translation software as a web extension for the open source Mozilla Firefox browser.”
For its part, in the Translations Firefox extension page, from where you can install it, they add: “Firefox Translations was developed with The Bergamot Project Consortium, coordinated by the University of Edinburgh with partners from Charles University in Prague, the University of Sheffield, the University of Tartu and Mozilla. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.”
As for its operation, it is more basic than a jug, as you can see in the image above. The only thing I don’t like about the extension is that you can’t disable it in private mode, but since it’s supposedly safe in this regard…
Have you tried Firefox Translations? Are you going to try them? How about?
