Japanese translate option in firefox translations

[Jeppie]

I think many people including me want to have the Japanese translation option for websites. I need to use now google translate for translating Japanese websites. And I don't like it to use every time google translate for that.

[UnseenLurker]

Excelent news!

A question for @nordzilla, you mentioned training a model... Is the translation done by machine learning?

Usually these large language models are served as an online service since they require a lot of processing power, will this translator model somehow manage to run locally to ensure privacy and security are mantained, or does the translation tool need to send the source text over the network to be processed by a server running the LLM at Mozilla?

[marco]

@UnseenLurkerthe models we train are not served as an online service, Firefox downloads them and runs them locally so privacy and security are fully preserved. You can read more at https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/features/translate/.

[nordzilla]

Hey @UnseenLurker, I appreciate you taking the time to ask!

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Usually these large language models are served as an online service since they require a lot of processing power, will this translator model somehow manage to run locally to ensure privacy and security are mantained, or does the translation tool need to send the source text over the network to be processed by a server running the LLM at Mozilla?

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Each of our models is trained for a specific language pair (e.g. Japanese to English). They distilled to a size of roughly 20 to 25 megabytes.

• You can view the model sizes and release statuses on this dashboard.

When a translation is requested, the relevant models for the relevant language pair are then downloaded to the user's device. Our inference engine has been optimized to run the models locally on the device's CPU.

• You can view the open-source models themselves in this repository.

The only information transferred over the wire is the download of the language-specific models to your device. The content of the source text and the translated output are not sent anywhere during translation. Once the models have been downloaded, an Internet connection is not required to translate.

[dai]

Hi guys, @marco @nordzilla 🙂👋

Okay, I understand the direction.😀

then, I have a question for Nordin.

You mention Japanese-English interconversion as an example, is this because this is a thread referring to Japanese? There is no mention of Japanese, Chinese, or Korean so-called CJK support on the official page or repo.

Note: That I'm also participating in Chrome Builtin-AI test, but I've not seen such a drastic change in direction.
We are very excited about this endeavor and would like to give you keen feedback💪

[ryanpdey]

Just wanted to say that I'm happy to see this is finally taking shape. I am curious though, how long does it typically take to train these models on a specific language pair? I am curious if this endeavor would be something possible to see by the end of the year, or if it takes enough time to push the release of these languages to 2025. Thanks!

[ryanpdey]

Glad to see this feature is finally taking shape. I am curious, though. How long does it typically take to train these models on a single language pair? Japanese/English for instance. I am interested to know if it takes long enough that this feature would release by the end of the year or if it would get pushed to 2025, as I am eagerly awaiting the ability to translate Japanese natively. Thanks!