When users visit a website, they have an urgent need to access specific information. The last thing they want is to wrestle with menus and settings - especially settings that should be remembered from previous use.
Firefox's website translation feature is frustratingly inefficient compared to other mobile browsers.
In Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Opera, Brave):
- Browser automatically detects when content is in a foreign language.
- Instantly translates the entire website to your preferred language (the language preference is based on the OS, browser settings, or previous choice). the translation happens "in one blink".
In Firefox:
- Translation must be enabled manually for each page. (I know it's possible to translate a language automatically but I disabled it, which adds an extra step, because at best FF translation repeats words and produces outright unfathomable phrases and at worst, it breaks the website UI altogether).
- A menu pops up requiring you to:
- Select the source language from a long list (if Firefox doesn't detect it which happens half the time)
- Manually select your target language from another long list 3.
- This entire process must be repeated for every page, nevermind every website, as Firefox doesn't remember your language preferences
While Firefox's translation quality isn't perfect - sometimes duplicating words or breaking website layouts - the bigger issue is this time-consuming process that stands between users and the information they need.
