Mozilla has integrated Firefox Translations, the upcoming privacy-friendly translation system, into the latest Nightly version of the Firefox web browser. Translations happen locally on the system, and not in the cloud; this is the main distinguishing factor between the translation feature and popular solutions such as Chrome's Google Translate integration.

We have followed the development of Firefox Translations, previously known as Project Bergamot closely, ever since the project was revealed back in October 2019.

The first usable Firefox extension was released last month. Then-called Project Bergamot, it introduced translation functionality in the browser. Earlier this month, a second version was released and with it came the name change to Firefox Translations.

The new version introduced several improvements that made the extension leaner and more useful in the process.

Today, still in May 2021, Mozilla included the latest version of the translation engine into the Firefox Nightly browser. The feature is not enabled by default, but all users who use the latest Nightly version can install it. The Nightly version on my test system had the version 90.0a1 (2021-05-29).

The translation feature supports only a handful of languages at this time, including English and Spanish. Support for more languages will be introduced soon.

Enable Firefox's Translation feature

1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
2. Confirm that you will be careful.
3. Search for extensions.translations.disabled.
4. Set the preference to FALSE to enable translations in Firefox.
5. Restart the browser.

You will find Firefox Translations listed under add-ons in Firefox. The version is still the same as the version that we reviewed earlier this month.

You can disable the translation feature again by disabling the extension in the add-ons manager, about:addons, or by setting the preference to TRUE instead.

Using the built-in translation feature

Visit a website that is in a foreign language, which is not a system language on the operating system, and Firefox will display a small translation bar at the top. It offers the usual options, to translate the page, or to never translate the language or the site.

Closing Words

Integration in Firefox is a milestone for the project. While it is certain that the translations feature won't be included in Stable versions of the Firefox web browser anytime soon, it is clear that Firefox will get the long-awaited translation feature eventually.