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Olivier Mehani

TIL: Firefox has a machine translation system built into `about:translations`. This also works on mobile.

Screenshot of Firefox Translations, at url `about:translations`. It shows a familar and simple UI with two side-by-side text boxes, the left one has a combobox saying “Detect language (French)”, and contains French text: “Je viens de découvrir que Firefox a un système de traduction automatique intégré dans `about:translations`”. The right one has a combobox saying “English”, and contains the translation of that text: “I just found out that Firefox has a machine translation system built into 'about:translations'.”
27 October at 23:35 | Open on piaille.fr
12 comments
Adam Katz :donor:

@shtrom hah, maybe it should update spellcheck to the detected language

28 October at 5:32 | Open on infosec.exchange
Mx Amber Alex

@shtrom I have no idea if it is, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Donnie Darko: "I have developed a new translation software." Therapist: "New translation software or rebadged DeepL?" Donnie: "Rebadged DeepL."
28 October at 7:36 | Open on eldritch.cafe
BohwaZ
Frederik Braun �

@amberage @shtrom no, it's actually powered by in-house developed machine learning. The translation is fully offline and local. The language packs are downloaded on the fly as a WASM-blob, thus allowing the code to be small while also allowing sanbdoxed extensibility on the fly. It's pretty cool tech IMHO, but you'll understand that I might be biased.

28 October at 8:24 | Open on social.security.plumbing
Mx Amber Alex
SnoopJ

@amberage @freddy @shtrom none of those details disqualifies the feature from being deep learning, which it is. It's just not the particularly stupid and wasteful service-subscription variety that is currently gobbling up money/attention from credulous fools.

The Translations feature is powered by models trained on language pairs (i.e. language A<->B) and the more narrow domain is very effective. It does have some data availability problems, but it's been a success IMO.

firefox-source-docs.mozilla.or

@amberage @freddy @shtrom none of those details disqualifies the feature from being deep learning, which it is. It's just not the particularly stupid and wasteful service-subscription variety that is currently gobbling up money/attention from credulous fools.

The Translations feature is powered by models trained on language pairs (i.e. language A<->B) and the more narrow domain is very effective. It does have some data availability problems, but it's been a success IMO.

28 October at 17:03 | Open on hachyderm.io
F4GRX Sébastien

@freddy @amberage @shtrom if it's downloaded on the fly then it's not offline.

29 October at 16:24 | Open on chaos.social
Blake Leonard

@f4grx @freddy @amberage @shtrom Once it's downloaded, then it's offline. It doesn't download it over and over again, just the once (and maybe, while connected, if there are updates).

29 October at 17:41 | Open on infosec.town
butterflyoffire ⏚ꝃ⌁⁂
Amelia Bellamy-Royds

@shtrom Excellent. I was trying to find out if this existed recently but couldn't figure out the URL — it's not yet listed in about:about !

The old Firefox translations extension had a pop-up widget on the toolbar, but that disappeared when translations were integrated in the core browser. And this is much easier to use, anyway. Limited languages so far, but once it has downloaded the language models, it runs offline.

28 October at 16:42 | Open on front-end.social
Kiran Castellino :he_him:

@shtrom See, I knew that Firefox could translate websites, but I didn't realise it also had a front-end for translating whatever I wanted!

28 October at 23:51 | Open on aus.social
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