Firefox will soon be able to translate web pages into other languages – and will do so without using any third-party cloud-based services such as Google Translate or Bing Translator.
Instead, the translation will happen entirely on your own device, which is in keeping with Mozilla's stated aim to let users keep control of their data (in this case, their identity and the content of the web pages they're viewing), and will keep costs down as there's no need for external processing.
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As ZDNet reports, this will be made possible by a translation library being developed as part of The Bergamot Project, which is dedicated to developing and improving client-side translation using machine learning.
The Bergamot Project received a grant of €3 million (about $3.3 million / £2.6 million / AU$4.9 million) from the EU earlier this year to increase the uptake of language technologies in situations where confidentiality is essential.
Keep it to yourself
Mozilla has considered adding translation to Firefox before, but scrapped the idea due to the costs involved. If users want such an option in the browser, they currently have to install a third-party extension.
Mozilla is currently hiring neural machine translation engineers to work on integrating Project Bergamot into Firefox, but you can already see an early demo in the video below, shared by Firefox developer Kelly Davis.
Via ZDNet
