Its developers Mozilla are trying to add the ability to automatically translate pages in Firefox, similar to what Google Chrome already has.
However, the Firefox page translation feature will be different from the one available in Google Chrome.
Instead of relying on cloud text translation services (such as Google Translate, Bing Translator or Yandex.Translate), Firefox will use its own client-side machine learning library.
This library is currently under development project Bergamot, recently funded by 3 million from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.
"With the transition to client-side translation (client-side), citizens will be able to maintain their privacy and thereby increase the adoption of language technologies in Europe in areas requiring confidentiality," Bergamot researchers said in January. after securing funding.
The technology is currently in active development, and Mozilla has begun hiring mechanical translation developers to integrate Bergamot into Firefox. Once completed, the library will be released with an open source license.
Mozilla has always tried to develop a similar translation capability.
Most of the developers' work right now is to refine the Bergamot library, not to modify Firefox's code. Firefox already has a user interface (UI) to support page translation functionality.
This user interface was added years ago when Mozilla first wanted to add a page translation function similar to its Google Chrome. But the company's plans collapsed when it realized that supporting the feature required enormous financial costs that it could not afford.
However, Mozilla, which always wanted a feature similar to Chrome, left the UI inside Firefox, though it never added API keys from various translation services. The UI continues to be there, hoping that money or some better solution will be found in the future.
If you like, you can enable this interface from the about: config page.
There you need to activate the following two flags:
browser.translation.ui.show and browser.translation.detectLanguage.
Firefox Nightly users can activate both flags to watch the development of the Bergamot project.
Last week, Firefox developer Kelly Davis put two demos of Bergamot into action, showing that the library was starting to run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ha59D7IaOg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptmLzVeU0dk
