Mozilla working on native Firefox translation feature

[Karlston]

Mozilla working on native Firefox translation feature

Mozilla is working on integrating a native translation feature in the organization's Firefox web browser that does not rely on cloud services.

 

One of the advantages that the Chrome browser has over Firefox is that it comes with integrated translate functionality. Mozilla did work on translation features in Firefox and integrated several services, including Yandex Translate and Google Translate in Firefox.

 

The functionality is not enabled by default; one of the main reasons for that is that Mozilla would have to pay the companies that operate the translation services for API use. While Firefox users may get an API key from these services to integrate it in the browser, it is not something that is advertised by Mozilla.

 

Firefox users who require translate functionality install browser extensions such as To Google Translate or Translate Man.

 

 

The native integration of machine translation functionality in Firefox is part of Project Bergamot, a research project funded by the European Union. The project's consortium is a joint venture of the University of Edinburgh, University of Sheffield, Charles University, University of Tartu and Mozilla.

 

A main focus of the project is to improve client-side machine translations in web browsers to improve privacy and make the solution viable for sectors that can't use cloud-based translation services.

The focus of the 3-year Bergamot project is addition and improvement of client-side machine translation in a web browser. This shift to client-side translation empowers citizens to preserve their privacy and increases the uptake of language technologies in Europe in sectors that require confidentiality.

Mozilla plans to integrate the project into the Firefox web browser to bring native client-side translation functionality to the browser.

 

A development milestone has been reached recently when the team managed to integrate a basic version of the translation engine in the Firefox web browser (not yet publicly available).

 

A demonstration video has been published on YouTube that shows the client-side translation of a German text into English.

 

 

The translate functionality uses the same interfaces as the already integrated translate services in Firefox. Mozilla Firefox detects the language of the page and suggests to translate it into a different language based on the user's preference.

 

A click on the translate button starts the process that is handled solely on then local machine.

Closing words

Project Bergamot is an ongoing project at the time but if the joined research team manages to create a solution that runs machine translations natively and does not lag behind in functionality or performance to cloud-based solutions, it would eliminate one of the shortcomings of the Firefox web browser without sacrificing privacy or costing money that Mozilla would have to pay to third-parties for API uses.

 

 

Source: Mozilla working on native Firefox translation feature (gHacks - Martin Brinkmann)

[funkyy]

Excellent news!! Firefox may have had its problems, but patience is a virtue and in my opinion it's improving well.

[mood]

What is the status of Firefox's client-side translation feature?

 

Work on a project called Bergamot started in 2019 to develop client-side translation in a web browser. The project, run by several European universities and Mozilla, aims to create a translation service that preserves privacy for home users and the public sector alike.

 

Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, ships the browser without translation functionality. While it did work on various translation features in Firefox in the past, none made it in the stable version of the browser, or at least not in enabled state.

 

Firefox users may install browser extensions like To Google Translate or Translate Man to add translation functionality to the browser. The big issue with these extensions is that they rely on third-party services, often by Google, Microsoft, Yandex and other companies. All of these translation services require connections to company servers, and that is a problem from a privacy point of view.

 

 

Project Bergamot aims to change that by running the translation engine locally and not in the cloud. The project team released a short demonstration video in 2019 that showed the first basic version of client-side translation running in the Firefox web browser.

 

Another interesting feature of Project Bergamot is that you may enable a quality estimation. The extension color-codes the text to estimate the quality of the translation; for example, green text indicates high quality.

 

 

Last month, another video has been published on the project team's official Twitter channel. The team demonstrates two different forms of translation in the demonstration: translation of user input and translation of an entire website. Both translations happen on the local system without requirement to connect to a cloud service. In fact, the only time the extension contacts a server is when it needs to download the files necessary to translate a language that is not supported locally yet.

 

The speed of the translation is fast, and it is backed up by numbers. The team published translation performance data back in June 2020 for several devices. State of the art desktop PCs from 2019 manage to translate more than 8000 words per second using the machine translation service; the number goes down on older systems, e.g. a desktop from 2016 manages more than 6000 words per second and an iMac from 2012 more than 3000 words per second. Most websites should translate in under a second even on older systems.

Closing Words

The team has not announced a release date yet. Whether we will see a public preview of the Bergamot extension in 2021 is unknown at this point.

Now You: What is your take on Project Bergamot? (via Sören Hentzschel)

 

 

Source: What is the status of Firefox's client-side translation feature?