Mozilla launched the Local Translator Toolkit project in 2011, but its functionality is not easily accessible to normal users. Fortunately, Firefox developer Jan de Mooij has added a new feature to Firefox that allows you to install the Local Translator Toolkit through Firefox’s Add-On Manager.
Mozilla’s Browser Lead announced today that Local Translator has shipped a new version of Project Bergamot, an experimental project in the Firefox Nightly channel. If you’ve often found yourself in a situation where you are reading an article online in a language you do not understand, but would like to translate it, Mozilla’s Local Translator can definitely help.
You can now enable the local translator for opened pages in Mozilla Firefox. Following the recent announcement of a privacy-friendly local translation feature in Vivaldi, Mozilla is now adding its own page translation under the codename Project Bergamot. Unlike Google’s and Microsoft’s translators, the soon-to-be-released translator for Firefox does not require you to send data from the client to the translation server. This means users can maintain more privacy, which is the general motto of everything the Mozilla Foundation does with its browser.
The built-in page translator is currently present in Firefox Nightly with a rather long list of major flaws. To enable local translation of pages in Firefox, the browser needs to do some testing with the options. Moreover, the list of supported languages is extremely short.
Firefox Nightly currently supports translation from Spanish and Estonian to English (and vice versa) and from English to German, but only in one direction.
Then you need to download the translation update package, which is about 120 MB in size. The browser needs this package to make the service as private as possible, with support for offline streaming.
And finally : While Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge translate a page in seconds, in Firefox it takes at least half a minute for the process to complete.
If you still want to try this offline translation feature, read here how to enable local translation of pages in Firefox.
Enable local translator in Firefox (Bergamot project)
- Update Firefox Nightly to the latest version.
- Launch your browser, type about:config into the address bar and hit Enter.
- Click Accept risk and proceed to the next page.
- Now set xpinstall.signatures.dev-root to true.
- If you have installed third-party page translation extensions, set xpinstall.signatures.required to false. Otherwise, this step can be skipped.
- Enable the new Proton user interface with the browser.proton.enabled parameter. Set to where. The new Firefox translator won’t work with the old model, so you’ll have to make do with the new one.
- Now set browser.proton.infobars.enabled to true. This option includes the translator toolbar.
- Set dom.postMessage.sharedArrayBuffer.bypassCOOP_COEP.insecure.enabled to true.
- Restart your browser.
- Finally, click this link to download the translator extension directly from GitHub. The browser will ask you if you want to add the Bergamot extension. Click the Add button.
Your browser is now ready to translate pages with the privacy-friendly offline translator. How to use it.
How to translate a page with the local translator in Firefox
Translating a page in Firefox with the built-in translator is easy. After all the above configuration flags are set, open a page written in one of the supported languages. Firefox automatically opens a small toolbar that asks you to translate the page into English. Just click on Translate and wait for the process to complete.
Once Firefox has finished translating, you can reset the page to its original language and change other settings. For example, you can specify that pages from a particular language will never be translated, or that pages from the desired language will always be translated.
Now we just have to wait for the Mozilla Foundation to add more languages and make the process of enabling the native local translator in Firefox faster and more convenient. In the meantime, you can use third-party extensions. (via Sören Hentzschel)
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I turn on translation in Firefox?
Mozilla’s latest browser update, Firefox 3.6, has added a number of new features, including a built-in translation tool. This handy tool allows you to translate pages into your native language, and it even works with web pages that aren’t otherwise translated. The translation tool works by pulling text from the page in your selected language, and replacing it with a translation on the fly. To turn it on, simply type about:config into your browser’s address bar and search for translation. Double-click the “general.useragent.override.translate” preference, and then select true to enable the feature. Many Firefox users are unaware that Firefox has a built-in translation feature that lets you translate entire webpages into languages you don’t understand. While the Firefox automatic translation feature isn’t as slick as Google Translate or other online translation tools, it can still save you time when visiting foreign language websites. Bootstrap Framework Bootstrap is a framework for building responsive, mobile first projects on the web. It uses a 12-column responsive grid system, as well as prebuilt components and JavaScript plugins to make starting a project easier. The project was created by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton at Twitter in early 2011. The framework has been open-sourced since. Installation To get started with Bootstrap, you need to download
Does Firefox have a translation tool like Chrome?
As you know, Google’s Chrome web browser is one of the most popular browsers around. But did you know that Google isn’t the only company with translation tools? Mozilla – the makers of Firefox – also has a translation tool, which it calls Firefox Send. To use Firefox Send, you’ll need to install the Firefox Send Add-On . You can do that by clicking the “Add to Firefox” button above. Once you’ve got the Add-On installed, you can send any web page to a friend, as long as they have the Add-On installed too. Firefox has been competing with Chrome for years, and the Mozilla company has made a lot of headway in that time by offering incentives for users to switch from Chrome to Firefox, such as by providing more space for extensions, and even creating a new search bar that is non-intrusive and doesn’t share data with Google. However, one area where Chrome has always had a clear advantage is in translation tools; in recent years, Google has added machine translation capabilities to the Chrome browser, allowing users to translate web pages instantly, and the translation features of Firefox are nowhere near as good. So, will Mozilla be adding translation capabilities to Firefox, or will it continue to lag behind in that area?
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Feedback,Privacy settings,How Search works,bergamot project
