Last used language in "Translate page" window

[zio3d]

I wanted to propose a small change.
The window for translating a web page currently offers the default value "Choose a language" for the "Translate to" field.

It would be preferable if it proposed the last used value instead.
Currently I must every time to click on the drop down box, search for my language and click on it.
Generally, most of the time, you want to have the translation into a specific language that is unlikely to change. Rather than having a value that will need to be modified ("Choose a language"), it is better to propose the last used one, there is a greater chance that it will be correct.

Thanks.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[marco]

@zio3dwhat is the language of your browser? And which language are you choosing to translate web pages to?

[gregtatum]

Can you give me an example of a webpage that you want to translate plus the languages set in your browser? Specifically the language list in "Choose your preferred language for displaying pages". Normally there is a language present there, and I'm trying to understand why there isn't in this case.

[zio3d]

@marco The language set on the browser is Italian.
The web pages to be translated are in English and I want to translate them into Italian.

[zio3d]

@gregtatum The problem occurs on all pages.
For example also the current post "https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/last-used-language-in-quot-translate-page-quot-window/idc-p/524...".
Or, taking a random page from Wikipedia, I have "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonham_Carter_family".

When it's time to translate the page, the translation window offers me "Choose a language" as the destination language, which I have to set to "Italian".

In my browser settings, I have the "Choose your preferred language for displaying pages" field with the following lines "Italiano [it]", "Italiano [it-it]", "Inglese (Stati Uniti) [en-us]" and "Inglese [en]".

[zio3d]

I tried on another PC and it actually already shows "Italian" as the target language.
However, I noticed that on the other PC the button for translating the page "" appears in the address bar, whereas on my PC it never appears.

Did I deactivate something by mistake?

[zio3d]

@gregtatumEvery internet page.

For example "https://www.bbc.com/":

Or Wikipedia "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marathon":

These are my options:

[gregtatum]

Here English being in the web page languages means that you won't be offered a translation, since the browser is requesting the English version. If you remove it, you should get offers for translation.

[zio3d]

@gregtatum 

Excellent, by eliminating the two lines relating to the English language, it now works, the possibility of translating the pages into Italian appears.

But I imagine it becomes a problem for all Italians since it

seems to be the default setting of Firefox Italian.

I checked on three different computers and all three have the same settings: "Italiano [it], Italiano [it-it], Inglese (Stati Uniti) [en-us], Inglese [en]".
I have now removed "Inglese (Stati Uniti) [en-us], Inglese [en]" from all three PCs.

Thanks.

[zio3d]

Should I open another bug to fix the fact that all Italian versions of Firefox have 4 default languages? (Italian [it], Italian [it-it], English (United States) [en-us], English [en])
Since that is the case, no one like me will have the translation menu for web pages 🤔.

[nordzilla]

Hey @zio3d, thanks for bringing this up!

This is quite a nuanced technical situation, so I'll do my best to explain!

Firstly, for the purpose of Translations, we want to be mindful that users likely do not want to see translations offered to them for languages that they speak. This is why, for example, if your web-requested language list includes Italian, then we will not offer to translate Italian when you visit an Italian web page.

Secondly, all of our localized builds of Firefox, for every language, ship with English as a fallback by default. This is why the Italian UI that is shown above has English listed in addition to Italian. This makes it difficult for us to make a determination about whether or not we should offer to translate English web pages for the user, because we don't actually know if the user speaks English, or if they simply have English in their language list because it was shipped as the default fallback with their non-English localized build of Firefox.

Our logic around the scenario boils down to this:

If the user's language list is the same as the default language list that was shipped with their browser, then we will offer to translate English. However, if the user has modified their language list and they have kept English in the list, then we have to assume at that point that they do speak English and kept it there intentionally. 

It's an imperfect solution, but it's the best we can do given that English is shipped with every locale.

Here's the interesting part in this case: the languages in the screenshots above are not in the default order.

• The default order would be it-it, it, en-us, en.
• The order in the screenshots above is it, it-it, en-us, en.

Note that it-it is more specific than it, and so it usually comes first in the list, just the way that en-us comes before en.

This has caused our code to detect that the language preferences have been modified from the default, and English was left in the list. So the assumption is that English is one of the user's understood languages, and we do not offer Translations for English.

One way to solve this is to remove English from the list (as it seems like you have done). The other way to solve this would be to move it-it back in front of it. Then it would continue to match the default languages, and English should again be offered by default.

The interesting thing here, is that you reported to have three different computers that were all using the same language order.

If you are willing to share, I am interested to know if you are aware that the language lists were in a non-default order, and if you know how or why the order was set that way.