this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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The Firefox browser now has a built-in page translator that works even without the Internet::Mozilla has announced the release of an update to its Firefox browser. In version number 118, users will find a significant innovation - a built-in translator

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 95 points 1 year ago (19 children)

Only these languages though:

Bulgarian
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

That's really not good. Literally all of these are European languages.

I'd rather have it connected to a better translation service than have it be offline. I don't understand why the translator working offline is even a plus. It's a web browser.

I assume there must not be any FOSS translation services they can use so this offline translator is just a consequence of that.

[–] gamer@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's for privacy purposes. An online translator requires that all the text you're reading be sent to a third party, which may or may not use it for nefarious purposes. E.g. maybe you translate your bank account's web page because there's a word you don't know, and now Google knows how much money you have in your bank account.

If you don't care about that kind of privacy, then there's no reason you couldn't use an existing online translator. Firefox has always supported that.

[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

That makes sense, thanks.

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