Mozilla is Working on a Built-in Translator in Firefox, Here’s How to Enable It

Mozilla team is going to introduce a native or built-in Translator tool in its popular web browser “Firefox“. At the moment, Firefox doesn’t come with any translations functionality but future versions of Firefox will provide native translations feature to all users.

In this article, we’ll learn how to enable and test the upcoming translations feature right now in Firefox. Following screenshot shows the built-in translator enabled and working in Firefox:

PS: The translator feature is not fully functional at the moment. It can be enabled for testing purposes but the translation will not happen.

Enable and Test Built-in Translations Feature in Firefox

Mozilla has already implemented translations functionality in public stable version of Firefox. By default, it’s hidden and disabled. Interested users can manually activate and enable it by modifying a secret preference/flag present on about:config page.

At the moment, the translation feature is under development. When we enable it, it doesn’t translate anything. There is still some coding work pending to make it fully functional.

If you want to test drive the upcoming translations functionality in Firefox stable versions, following steps will help you:

1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “Accept the Risk and Continue” button. It’ll open Firefox’s hidden secret advanced configuration page i.e. about:config page.

2. Now type translation in Search filter box and you’ll see following preferences in the window:

There are 2 Boolean preferences: browser.translation.detectLanguage and browser.translation.ui.show. You need to enable both these preferences to enable the built-in translator tool in Firefox. By default, both preferences are set to false, which means the built-in translation feature is deactivated and disabled.

3. To enable the new translation feature in Firefox, double-click on both preferences browser.translation.detectLanguage and browser.translation.ui.show and set their values to true. Alternatively, you can click on the Toggle icon given next to the preference names.

The browser.translation.detectLanguage preference enables the translation feature in Firefox and the other preference browser.translation.ui.show adds a new option to turn on/off the translator to Firefox Settings page.

Customizing Translations Feature Using Firefox Settings Page

Since we turned on browser.translation.ui.show preference, it’ll add a new option to Firefox Settings page to change or customize translator settings.

1. Open Firefox Settings by clicking on the Hamburger icon present at the right-side end of the toolbar and selecting Settings option. Alternatively, you can direct option Settings page using about:preferences command in address bar.

2. Now under “General” tab, scroll down a little and look for “Language” section. You’ll now see a new option “Translate web content” added.

3. You can enable/disable this option to turn on/off built-in translation feature. This option toggles the value of above mentioned browser.translation.detectLanguage preference on about:config page.

You can click on Exceptions button and check which languages/websites are set to never translate. This option is connected with browser.translation.neverForLanguages preference on about:config page.

You can modify value of browser.translation.engine preference on about:config page from default Google to Bing or other web translation engines and the same will start showing on Firefox Settings page.

Using Firefox Translations Tool to Translate Web Pages

Now let’s test the built-in translator functionality. Open a webpage which uses a different language such as wikipedia.com and select a different language version.

As soon as you open a different language page in Firefox, you’ll see the translator toolbar activated at the top of the page as shown in following screenshot:

The translator will automatically detect the page language or you can select the correct language using the drop-down box. To translate the page, click on “Translate” button and here the error comes.

You’ll see “There has been an error translating this page.” error message in translation toolbar and a button to try again but it’ll fail every time as the translations feature is not fully functional.

There is also a menu given at the end of the translations toolbar with the name “Options“. You can click on the Options menu and select options such as never translate and translations preferences. Translations preferences option will open Firefox Settings page. If you select never translate option, it’ll add the setting to Exceptions list.

PS: When you enable the built-in translator and use the translator for the first time, you see a welcome pop-up or flyout showing “Hey look! It’s something new” message. As soon as you click on Thanks button or anywhere else to dismiss the welcome flyout, it adds a new preference browser.translation.ui.welcomeMessageShown with the value of true to about:config page.

It tells Firefox that the user has received the welcome message and should not display the message again. You can set the preference to false or delete the preference to see the welcome message again.

Download Official Firefox Translations Add-on to Enable Working Translator Feature

It’ll take some time in getting a fully functional built-in translations tool in Firefox stable version. Testing versions such as Nightly have already received it. You need to set extensions.translations.disabled preference to false to enable the translations feature in Firefox Nightly builds.

In the mean time, you can install official Firefox Translations add-on in Firefox to enable the upcoming translations feature right now.

It’s available for download at official Firefox Add-ons page. You can download and install it using following link:

Download and Install Firefox Translations Add-on

This add-on translates the pages locally without using cloud. It’s based on The Bergamot Project which also powers the built-in translator present in Firefox Nightly builds.

Also Check:

[Tip] Disable “Translate This Page” Feature in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge