Enhance the translation feature in the Firefox adress bar

[Mozilla2048]

I'm using Firefox 129.0.2 on Windows 11 and I would like to tell you about some issues I noticed with the new translator module:

• Many Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese...) are not supproted.
• I set my preferred language to "French" and started surfing the net. When I come across a web page written partially in French but also in English (like https://proton.me/blog/fr), the module fails to recognize the language and does not even display its icon in the adress bar. I think it's because it considers the page to be written in French. Perhaps it would be better to make the translator icon always remain in the adress bar, not necessarily popping up. I love the "translate the selected text" option in the context menu, which is always avilable and proposes many languages in its "Translate from" and "Translate to" menus... regardless of the language in which the selected text is written. I believe the adress bar version should follow its example.
• Easter egg : "Firefox Browsers" translates to "Blocs de pompiers" (literally "fire brigade blocks") in French!

Otherwise it's perfect ! The translations are accurate, I use it almost everyday. Thanks ^^

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

Traduction avec Firefox
https://support.mozilla.org/fr/kb/traduction-sites-web
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation

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Sinon, cliquez sur l’icône de traduction dans la barre d’outils ou sélectionnez Traduire la page dans le menu

https://www.youtube.com/embed/GEFpfQnNFLI

Other https://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=3121554

[Mozilla2048]

Merci pour votre réponse ! Le lien YouTube m'a montré comment traduire une page à partir du menu de l'application même si le module de traduction échoue à reconnaître la langue de la page... Je pense donc que ce problème est à peu près résolu. Mais néanmoins, je pense toujours que l’icône du traducteur devrait toujours rester dans la barre d'adresse. Je suis sûr de n'être pas le seul à ne pas avoir vu le bouton "Traduire la page..." bien caché dans ce menu en haut à droite...

Les autres problèmes sont donc l'indisponibilité des langues asiatiques et d'occasionnelles erreurs de traductions comme le "Blocs de pompiers"...

J'ai récemment remarqué un autre bug :

1. Aller sur https://deepai.org/chat en réglant sa langue préférée dans les paramètres de Firefox sur une langue autre que l'anglais.
2. Activer la traduction en français (ou en une langue autre que l'anglais).
3. Commencer à discuter en anglais avec l'agent conversationnel. La traduction ralentit le site, et le texte traduit est désastreux.

(Thank you for answering! Thanks to your YouTube link I now know how to translate the page from any language using the app menu, even if the translation module fails to recognize the language in witch the current page is written... therefore that problem seems pretty much resolved. Nevertheless, I still don't like to see the "trasnlate this page" icon disappear sometimes from the adress bar. I think it's not so easy to find the "Translate the page" option hidden inside the little app menu in the corner... without your YouTube link.

Ultimately the remaining issues are the unavailability of asian languages and occasional mistranslations such as "fire brigade blocks"...

I've just noticed another bug:

1. Set your preferred language to a language other than English and visit https://deepai.org/chat.
2. Select French (or any language but English) in the "Translate to" menu and turn on the translation feature.
   
3. Start chatting in english with the chatbot. The translation slows down the website and the translated text is ununderstandable.)

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

Other informations

Take a look at https://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=14960439#p14960439
By way of illustration https://searchfox.org/mozilla-release/source/modules/libpref/init/all.js

---

// Set to "All" to see all logs, which are useful for debugging. Set to "Info" to see
// the application logic logs, and not all of the translated messages, which can be
// slow and overwhelming.
pref("browser.translations.logLevel", "Error");

---

Configuration Editor for Firefox
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox
Search browser.translations.logLevel

https://www.youtube.com/embed/yt3DIrYy6bg

Browser Console
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/browser_console/index.html

Maybe, you can send your comments to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Firefox

[Mozilla2048]

Hello

Sorry for replying to you after so much time...

Thanks for all the links! I learnt how to view logs from the translator in the browser console, but unfortunately I did not understand them very well, for I'm not a professional like you are! I believe it was a little too advanced for a beginner like me... Thank you anyways!

I will try to send comments to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org. Still, I think occasional mistranslations are unavoidable. It always happens, with any translator! Let me tell you a game I found to play with mistranslations: type a sequence in Google Translator (or any other translator) and translate it to another language, then reverse the languages with the "flip" arrow to translate back your translation to the original language, and re-tranaslate again in the other one, and so on... eventually the translation becomes so different from the original text that it is pretty ununderstandable.

That being said, the Firefox Translator is still useful. When a page is only in German, for instance, I can translate it into English whenever I want to. And, the module keeps improving over time!

Finally, we can do nothing about the Asian languages... not yet, but they probably will become available soon!

Translated : "Sorry, the following language is not available yet : japanese / Try another language"

[Minky]

The French-English translator isn't too bad but the phrase "Fer à boucler" (DeepL: "curling iron") gave a surprise result yesterday...

 

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1g8l5at/comment/lt18p62

[Minky]

Another one, not so rude this time "défroisseur" (DeepL: "hair straightener")...

[Mozilla2048]

Hello. . . . .

I think you found two more "easter eggs"... It is funny to see how some sentences can give surprising results like that!

I also noticed that characters from unsupported languages (e.g. "あ" or "樹") will get completely ignored. I tried to translate a full sequence in Japanese from "English" to "French", and... (see the attachement)

I think this translator, as well as DeepL and all other translating machines, will never beat human beings. High quality translation requires understanding all words. And since machines are not "sentient", they convert "Bonjour" to 426f6e6a6f7572, and after some mathematical operations based on their training data they obtain 48656c6c6f, which means "Hello". They simply do not understand the real meaning of the words they transalte; that's why we occasionally find some "F***ing iron". Humans would never make such mistakes !

Nevertheless, the module is still very useful. And I believe it's continuously improving as time passes, and some day it will be able to translate to or from Japanese... (it is said to be the most difficult language in the world, so maybe that translator will take a while to learn it!)

Thank you for answering anyways!

[Mozilla2048]

Hello everybody, I'm so glad to see that Firefox v. 135 Translations now include Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese in the "Translate from" menu! The module seems to be improving over time and I believe it will soon be also able to translate to asian languages... Congrats to the Mozilla team!

We can now translate from Japanese

[Mozilla2048]

Hi! I recently noticed that Firefox Translations (v. 136) can now translate to Japanese and Korean. And it works. IT WORKS!! It's one more step towards a harmonious browsing experience for all users worldwide... Only Chinese left now. Maybe it will be released in Firefox 137? ^^

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

A test https://www.wwfchina.org under Firefox Nightly

[Mozilla2048]

That's right. We can translate from Chinese since v. 135, but we still can't translate to Chinese. But in my opinion it's coming soon! 🔜

The 'translate to' menu on about:translations

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

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没错。我们可以从第135节起翻译,但我们仍然不能翻译成中文。但在我看来,它很快就要来了!

[Mozilla2048]

Huh what? That's weird. On my Firefox 136.0.1 64 bits on Windows 11 24H2, I still can't translate to Simplified Chinese. I guess you're lucky... It's just already available on your system. But hey, that means it will be released very soon on all systems, maybe even before the release of Firefox 137! 😊

[Agentvirtuel]

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@Mozilla2048 wrote:

Huh what? That's weird. On my Firefox 136.0.1 64 bits on Windows 11 24H2, I still can't translate to Simplified Chinese

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Because, i used Firefox Nightly

[Rcimino]

Please visit https://www.atlantico.eu/myatlantico

When you allow FireFox to translate this Portuguese page into English (rather than using the English page though navigation), then click on the "Do you not remember your data", the resulting message translates with the "F" word in it (Please F*** us) I won't post a screen shot for risk of violating discussion etiquette. 

[Mozilla2048]

That was hilarious! The original Portuguese says "contact us"... And the worst thing is that it translates to rude stuff in any other language I tested - in French, for example, it translated to "S'il vous plaît, s'il vous plaît, m*****-nous". It is in fact similar to the "fer à boucler" translation, posted earlier in this discussion by @Minky.

Also, I noticed the button which reads "Price list" in the English version of the site reads "Price a prize" when translated using Firefox Translations (and "Prix prix un prix" in French). 🤣

No translator is perfect.

A translation fail from ja.wikipedia.org