Mozilla developers are working on adding automatic page translation to Firefox, similar to what Google Chrome already has.
However, Firefox's page translation feature will be different from that found in Google Chrome.
Instead of relying on cloud-based text translation services (such as Google Translate, Bing Translator , or Yandex.Translate), Firefox will use its own client-side translation library with machine learning capabilities.
This library is currently being developed as part of the Bergamot project, which was recently funded with 3 million euros from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.
“By moving to client-side translation, citizens will be able to maintain their privacy and thus increase the adoption of language technologies in Europe in areas that require confidentiality,” Bergamot researchers said in January after securing the funding.
The technology is currently in active development, and Mozilla has begun hiring machine translation developers to integrate Bergamot into Firefox. Once complete, the library will be released under an open source license.
Mozilla has always been trying to develop a similar translation feature.
Most of the developers' work right now is on refining the Bergamot library, not modifying Firefox's code. Firefox already has a user interface (UI) to support page translation functionality.
This user interface was added years ago when Mozilla initially wanted to add a page translation feature similar to Google Chrome. However, the company's plans fell through when it realized that supporting the feature required a huge financial outlay that it couldn't afford.
However, Mozilla, which always wanted a feature similar to Chrome's, left the UI inside Firefox, although it never added the API keys from various translation services. The UI continues to exist there, hoping that money or a better solution will be found in the future.
If you want, you can enable this user interface from the about:config page.
There you should enable the following two flags:
browser.translation.ui.show and browser.translation.detectLanguage.
Firefox Nightly users can enable both flags to follow the development of the Bergamot project.
Last week, Firefox developer Kelly Davis provided two demos of Bergamot in action, showing that the library is starting to be functional.
