Why is Translation implemented so poorly?

[dalinar]

I used translation of pages in chrome prior to vivaldi getting it. It worked pretty flawlessly in chrome.

But in Vivaldi it seems to translate initial bits only then not bother to translate other important parts of the site like the drop down menus, This happens on many sites, food delivery sites, shopping sites, etc.

It can't be a technical obstacle as even extensions in vivaldi like IM Translator can translate such things without problems (other than having an ugly banner at the top)

but i find it ununsable on many of the sites i'd like to use, which are often shopping sites. And I would suspect this is one of the main types of web sites most people would want to use translation on, for example when visiting a foreign country.

[Pesala]

@dalinar It is a trade-off between privacy and quality. You can use other translation engines in a Web Panel.

Vivaldi Translate

[dalinar]

@Pesala how does that work to translate the entire page? or do you just mean like a box in a web panel to type in words?

[Hadden89]

@dalinar another possibility is to use a search engine. F.ex I use gt <pageurl> to trigger g.translate

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=it&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=%s&edit-text=

(change it with the more common language you need)

[Pesala]

@dalinar It is so long since I used Microsoft Bing as a Web Panel, that I don't remember what it can do. Try it and see if it works better than Lingvanex if you don't care about privacy.

[Catweazle]

@dalinar, yes, the Vivaldi translator is somewhat limited, because of this I use an Desktop App, Crow Translate (FOSS), with a handlings somewhat similar to the IM Translate, which I used before, but more complete. Until now it's the best I found.

• Translate and speak text from screen or selection
• Support 125 different languages
• Low memory consumption (~20MB)
• Highly customizable shortcuts
• Command-line interface with rich options
• D-Bus API
• Available for Linux and Windows
• Engines: Google (most languages), Yandex and Bing (better translation), Libre Translate, Lingva.

Translation Pop-Up (Single window with selection/page translate)

Setting page

https://crow-translate.github.io

[DoctorG]

The Vivaldi team is in contact with Lingvanex to make the Vivaldi Translate service better.

[iAN CooG]

Yeah, but how about start to fix the code to remember last language selected instead of having always to fiddle with the drop down menus and selecting first other languages, then again the correct ones, to trigger the translations?
I can't stress enough that having a NOT WORKING translation tool is like having NO translation tool, and forces me to use always something else that at least works out of the box.

[Pesala]

@iAN-CooG It works far more often than it doesn't. Often, all that you need to do is refresh the page to translate untranslated text.

[RasheedHolland]

Yes it should be improved. I personally don't like to use the sidebar, but I have no choice since on TikTok the translate window is small and you can't move it around or make it bigger. So if you translate a large amount of text, it won't be visible, now how dumb is that?

[DoctorG]

@RasheedHolland said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

So if you translate a large amount of text, it won't be visible, now how dumb is that?

I am unhappy about this, too; translate window/popup needs more attention by Vivaldi devs.

[iAN CooG]

@Pesala said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

@iAN-CooG It works far more often than it doesn't.

It never works for me, and that's what matters to me. Never works.
After I select some text, right click and use Translate Selection, it proposes source Automatic Selection (which almost never works)

then I change source Japanese, destination Italian, text gets translated.

Then I select other text and use translate selection again

you must be kidding me. I have to select another language and then japanese again

Often, all that you need to do is refresh the page to translate untranslated text.

all I need to do is to use google translate that works out of the box.

[Pesala]

@iAN-CooG said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

Never works.
it proposes source Automatic Selection (which almost never works)

Make your mind up. It always works, if you select sufficient text. Once you know this limitation, you learn to select more text than you actually need.

[Catweazle]

I think the problem is that good translator apps are always paid or from large corporations that are not exactly beacons of privacy.
Alternatives OpenSource, if they do not use the aforementioned engines, are always very limited in vocabulary and number of available languages. Even using engines from these companies, it turns out that only Google has a good automatic recognition of the language, although it fails in the translation of certain languages ​​(e.g. the translation from Spanish to English is disastrous and often of no use).
Although Firefox has a built-in private translator, it is from Google, I do not think it is recommended that Vivaldi do the same.

For the moment in any case, the Vivaldi translator can be used to quickly translate a page from certain languages, but the use of an external translator for the moment will be essential. The difficulty is that Lingvanex, as well as Deeple in its free versions, are limited in vocabulary and amount of text.
Adding that Lingvanex privacy also isn't 100%, it sends data to Alphabet.Inc (Google)

https://lingvanex.com

[iAN CooG]

@Pesala said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

Make your mind up. It always works, if you select sufficient text.

You're justifying a broken implementation. You're free to be happy with it and its limitation, I'm not and using something else.

[DoctorG]

@iAN-CooG said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

be happy with it and its limitation, I'm not and using something else.

Full ack.

[Pesala]

@iAN-CooG said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

You're justifying a broken implementation.

No, I am not. I am refuting your false claim that it never works, or almost never works.

This feature has been available for over two years. There are 13 feature requests for improvements, the most popular of which seems to be Select Source and Target Languages for Translator.

I guess the developers will get to improving it when they have time.

[iAN CooG]

@Pesala said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

@iAN-CooG said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

You're justifying a broken implementation.

No, I am not. I am refuting your false claim that it never works, or almost never works.

I have shown screenshots as proof of my claims, I don't have anything else to say especially if you're pretending to be blind.

This feature has been available for [over two years]

and never made any fixes since day 0

[Catweazle]

I found also this translator which may serve, Reverso, it's a French EU product (GDPR), for Desktop, online and also as extension, 26 languages. Maybe good or Vivaldi

https://www.reverso.net/text-translation

[Pesala]

@iAN-CooG said in Why is Translation implemented so poorly?:

I have shown screenshots as proof of my claims,

It is tiresome to refute your obvious falsehoods. Your screenshots do not prove that it never works, not even almost never. All they prove is that Auto-detect needs more than a few words to work. Probably, there is a reason for that limit. Perhaps it would cost more or require more server bandwidth to reduce it?

Several improvements were made since it was released. I won't waste any more time to find all of them. Vivaldi adds 68 languages to Translate.

Here is an in-depth explanation of How the Translator Works by Petter Nilsen. The Vivaldi Team are clearly working on it constantly when languages are added by Lingvanex.

Some pages present extra translation challenges, such as those with iframes or dynamic pages, where texts might be removed and re-added.
We have also seen that some forums don’t load pages or posts using the “normal” mechanism. This means they don’t trigger the normal language detection mechanism, making it a challenge to determine the language without incurring performance penalties.
Of course, these are not necessarily unique challenges for Vivaldi Translate, as similar issues can be seen in other browsers. We expect to solve or improve upon them, as we go along.
Regardless of the challenges that come up, we are constantly working on optimizations and fixes to improve the user experience.