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Wow, I didn't think that people actually use on-site-translation. I know that translation became a lot better (using deepl [0] personally, check it out if you

Wow, I didn't think that people actually use on-site-translation. I know that translation became a lot better (using deepl [0] personally, check it out if you haven't heard of it!) in recent years, but on-site-translation always seemed quite goofy to me. I wonder if this caters more to a broader (elder) audience, making Firefox more attractive to less tech-affine folks? Seems like a critical feature for "your grantparents computer", doesn't it? [0] https://www.deepl.com/translator https://www.deepl.com/translator

lifthrasiir 7y ago
I use on-site machine translation a lot. In fact, I even use that for languages I do understand---at the reduced rate though, alleviating my mental overhead. Of course, you always have to understand that the machine translation can go off and both the common sense and the domain knowledge (including even the tiniest bit of knowledge about the source language) are important.
reustle 7y ago
As someone living in Japan without a deep grasp of Kanji characters, I use on-site translations 10s of times per day.
yoavm 7y ago
Not heaving in-page translation is the main reason my friends wouldn't switch to Firefox. It's also why I sometimes launch Chrome. Living in a foreign country, you often you have to login and fill in forms in a language you don't know. Being able to translate the whole page in place is extremely useful.
- heafield 7y ago
  Bergamot has an entire work package devoted to helping you fill out forms in a language you don't speak, while being confident that your answers are correct. We're testing out concepts here: https://github.com/zouharvi/ptakopet https://github.com/zouharvi/ptakopet .
jplayer01 7y ago
I'm not sure why you'd come to the conclusion that nobody uses on-site translation. Have you never visited a non-English site that you wanted to read/navigate but couldn't? Even if the translation isn't perfect, or even great, it's better than understanding 0 words and it's more than enough to navigate a page or to capture the essence of an article. It isn't a daily occurrence for me, but it happens often enough that I'm glad that this is happening. Switching to Chrome just for that was annoying.
- romanovcode 7y ago
  My guess is that he/she is from US and never has the need to visit non-US websites.
vertex-four 7y ago
Being based in Europe, I use on-site translation all the time when looking at things in other countries near me - not everything is translated into English.
Crinus 7y ago
I do not see the association between elder audiences and on-site translation. Let's say you are a techie and you understand zero Polish yet you got a job in Poland and you want to buy some equipment for your computer from https://www.x-kom.pl/ https://www.x-kom.pl/ - how would you do it without on-site translation? I'm in that situation and i pretty much use Chrome exclusively for on-site translation.
mrweasel 7y ago
Honestly I hope Mozilla will allow me to disable onsite translation to the point where I wouldn't know it's available. I'm sure it's a nice feature to lots of people, but I never want to see it. It's just another annoyance that I don't wish to deal with. Dealing with multiple language is still something browsers and websites struggle with. Yes, I know I have a Danish IP, and my language settings is British English, but just give me the original Swedish version of the content it's FINE. Much more useful feature, for my use case, would be language detection of input fields, so I don't have to switch between dictionaries to get the right spellchecker.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  > Yes, I know I have a Danish IP, and my language settings is British English, but just give me the original Swedish version of the content it's FINE. Given these settings, how would you expect the browser to know you want to see the Swedish content? You have explicitly indicated that you want British English (if available).
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    Funny. I have the opposite problem. I have a German IP, my OS/region/locale is set to American English, and sites regularly give me the German version even if I don't want/need it and even if I've previously been to the site and set it to English. MDN is the biggest offender for me right now because I use it nearly every day, and every single time I go to the damn site it's in German and I don't want it in German.
  - unhammer 7y ago
    I would expect/hope setting intl.accept_languages to include "da,sv,en" to be enough to make it stop translating those (in about:config or through the GUI)
    - mrweasel 7y ago
      I have no way of judging the correctness of any given translation of a language I can't already read, so I would prefer that the browser doesn't do any automatic translation. Personally I would prefer to not be able to read the content of a site, compared to getting a translation that may be wrong, even if it's clearly indicated that it's an automated translation.

lifthrasiir 7y ago

I use on-site machine translation a lot. In fact, I even use that for languages I do understand---at the reduced rate though, alleviating my mental overhead. Of course, you always have to understand that the machine translation can go off and both the common sense and the domain knowledge (including even the tiniest bit of knowledge about the source language) are important.

reustle 7y ago

As someone living in Japan without a deep grasp of Kanji characters, I use on-site translations 10s of times per day.

yoavm 7y ago

Not heaving in-page translation is the main reason my friends wouldn't switch to Firefox. It's also why I sometimes launch Chrome. Living in a foreign country, you often you have to login and fill in forms in a language you don't know. Being able to translate the whole page in place is extremely useful.

heafield 7y ago
Bergamot has an entire work package devoted to helping you fill out forms in a language you don't speak, while being confident that your answers are correct. We're testing out concepts here: https://github.com/zouharvi/ptakopet https://github.com/zouharvi/ptakopet .

jplayer01 7y ago

I'm not sure why you'd come to the conclusion that nobody uses on-site translation. Have you never visited a non-English site that you wanted to read/navigate but couldn't? Even if the translation isn't perfect, or even great, it's better than understanding 0 words and it's more than enough to navigate a page or to capture the essence of an article. It isn't a daily occurrence for me, but it happens often enough that I'm glad that this is happening. Switching to Chrome just for that was annoying.

romanovcode 7y ago
My guess is that he/she is from US and never has the need to visit non-US websites.

vertex-four 7y ago

Being based in Europe, I use on-site translation all the time when looking at things in other countries near me - not everything is translated into English.

Crinus 7y ago

I do not see the association between elder audiences and on-site translation. Let's say you are a techie and you understand zero Polish yet you got a job in Poland and you want to buy some equipment for your computer from https://www.x-kom.pl/ https://www.x-kom.pl/ - how would you do it without on-site translation? I'm in that situation and i pretty much use Chrome exclusively for on-site translation.

mrweasel 7y ago

Honestly I hope Mozilla will allow me to disable onsite translation to the point where I wouldn't know it's available. I'm sure it's a nice feature to lots of people, but I never want to see it. It's just another annoyance that I don't wish to deal with. Dealing with multiple language is still something browsers and websites struggle with. Yes, I know I have a Danish IP, and my language settings is British English, but just give me the original Swedish version of the content it's FINE. Much more useful feature, for my use case, would be language detection of input fields, so I don't have to switch between dictionaries to get the right spellchecker.

Aeolun 7y ago
> Yes, I know I have a Danish IP, and my language settings is British English, but just give me the original Swedish version of the content it's FINE. Given these settings, how would you expect the browser to know you want to see the Swedish content? You have explicitly indicated that you want British English (if available).
- jplayer01 7y ago
  Funny. I have the opposite problem. I have a German IP, my OS/region/locale is set to American English, and sites regularly give me the German version even if I don't want/need it and even if I've previously been to the site and set it to English. MDN is the biggest offender for me right now because I use it nearly every day, and every single time I go to the damn site it's in German and I don't want it in German.
- unhammer 7y ago
  I would expect/hope setting intl.accept_languages to include "da,sv,en" to be enough to make it stop translating those (in about:config or through the GUI)
  - mrweasel 7y ago
    I have no way of judging the correctness of any given translation of a language I can't already read, so I would prefer that the browser doesn't do any automatic translation. Personally I would prefer to not be able to read the content of a site, compared to getting a translation that may be wrong, even if it's clearly indicated that it's an automated translation.