Firefox 117 introduces local translations - TUXEDO Computers

The internet has become much more accessible in recent years, mainly due to one development. Translation frameworks such as Google Translate, Microsoft’s Bing Translator or DeepL allow many people a deeper understanding of foreign language texts thanks to AI technology.

Translation mechanisms have found their way into office applications like Softmaker Office NX and translate websites and texts at the click of a mouse button in almost every browser. But how do these translations come about?

How translations usually work

The texts to be translated are sent to a server in the cloud and returned translated. This means that the respective provider knows which texts are of interest to you. This excludes translation of confidential information, because Google and Bing store and analyse the texts according to their terms of use. At DeepL, data protection only extends to paying customers according to their privacy policy.

Servers mostly in the USA

In this way, the software learns and improves the quality of the translations. You have no control over what else happens to the data. When machine translations are used in companies, this approach may result in additional compliance risks up to and including data protection violations, which may be punishable by the GDPR.

Mozilla and the Bergamot Project

That is why we at TUXEDO find it very welcome that Mozilla is taking a different approach and is now offering translations where the data does not leave your computer. Firefox Translations is the result of the Bergamot Project research project funded by the European Union and coordinated by a consortium led by the University of Edinburgh with partners Charles University in Prague, the University of Sheffield, the University of Tartu in Estonia and Mozilla.

Previously shipped as an extension

Mozilla has been offering the result of this research as an extension for its Firefox browser for some time now. In the last few months, the developers have been working on native integration into the browser, so that the offer to translate websites and texts is available to every Firefox user out of the box.

With the recent release of Firefox 117, which is already available to you in TUXEDO OS, the goal has been met. Firefox Translations will be rolled out to users over the next few weeks and should be available to all users with the release of Firefox 118. You can see whether this is already the case for you by a new icon on the right in the address bar of the browser.

Start translating

After clicking on it, a new bar opens below it, in which you select the source and target language of the web page to be translated. It should be noted that Firefox Translations does currently not support direct translation between languages unless one of them is English. For example, if a website is to be translated from French to German, the page is first translated from French to English and then from English to German. This may still result in a loss of quality.

How does Firefox Translate work?

If you open a web page in a language that does not correspond to the preferred language defined in your settings and Firefox Translations supports translation from this language, Firefox automatically displays the translation bar. Currently, besides English and German, the following languages are supported: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish and Bulgarian. If Firefox cannot translate a page, the icon in the address bar is missing.

How can Firefox translate web pages locally?

In order for Firefox to translate web pages locally, language models for the corresponding language must be installed on the computer. Since this data is too large to be delivered directly within Firefox, the browser automatically downloads the models the first time a translation is started for which no suitable language model is yet locally available. However, you can also download the data manually in Settings → Translations.  An additional advantage besides privacy with this model is that it also works offline as soon as the required language models are available on your computer.

Use the button Translations → Settings to determine which languages should be translated automatically and for which languages a translation should never be offered. Firefox Translations can translate free texts as well as web pages. Although this function is not yet officially integrated, you can reach it by entering about:translations in the address line of the browser.

Conclusion and outlook

Firefox Translations initially concentrates mainly on translating web pages into nine languages. Free text translations are already possible unofficially, marked text passages as excerpts from web pages are to follow in future. Integration into the Android app is also planned. The official documentation provides further background information on Firefox Translations.

Firefox lives up to its role as an open source alternative

Mozilla’s local translation function without cloud connection is still in the early stages of development and cannot currently keep up with the market leaders in terms of either the languages supported or the quality of the translations. The fact that Mozilla is bucking the trend of sending everything to the cloud by providing this unique offering in Firefox to protect our privacy shows once again how important Mozilla as an organisation and Firefox as an open source browser are and why they deserve our support.