Firefox's latest update at last brings an offline translator to the browser, meaning your text won't be sent to some Google server every time. — Photo: Catherine Waibel/dpa
BERLIN: Some website is in a language you don't understand? Right click, translate to English. Perhaps one of Google Chrome's most popular features is now getting a more privacy-friendly version in rival browser Firefox.
Like many of Google's services, the built-in translation feature is practical, but can also mean sharing information from your browser with a giant of the advertising industry.
If you don't want Google to know exactly what you're translating, then Firefox's newest feature will come in handy.
Mozilla's browser (as of version 118) now has an integrated translator that works completely offline. All translations run locally on the user's own computer, instead of being sent to Google's servers as with Chrome.
The function can be activated in the browser menu under "General/Translations/Settings". There you can also specify whether and which languages are to be translated automatically.
You'll need to install the languages for offline translation, however, and you can pick between Bulgarian, English, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. Other languages are set to be added gradually, Mozilla says.
The Firefox translator is based on the open source project Bergamot, a research collaboration between several European universities and the Mozilla Foundation, which is funded by the European Union.
If you first want to check the quality of the translations, you can do so on a demo page of the project (note: this demo requires texts to be processed on servers). – dpa
