Why is Translation implemented so poorly?

iAN CooG

@Pesala ok you're blind. We get it.
My 3rd screenshot shows the problem: dropdown selector has Japanese but ENGLISH is still active on its right, same for the destination language, Italian in the selector but english is still active and the translation doesn't happen.
I really don't know what's wrong with you. Better we stop even seeing each other posts.

Pesala

@iAN-CooG Same problem. You have not selected sufficient text for Autodetect to work.

You are wrong to claim that it never works. It always works when sufficient text is selected.

Autodetect Works.gif

solidsnake

I was wondering, does it takes into consideration the language tag in the source page when it sends text to translation servers?

Pesala

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

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.

AltCode

@solidsnake From my experience it does, sites that are properly tagged have always been detected correctly with any arbitrary selection of text for me.

AltCode

As for auto-detection on sites that aren't properly tagged - which is pretty much any site showing snippets of text in another language, and all multi-lingual sites such as the local forum, Mastodon, Reddit, YouTube, ...or Twitter - it fails pretty miserably...

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

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

I don't get why you feel the need to repeat this so much. You're not really making as great a point as you think. If your idea of something always working includes the very huge caveat of needing to "select sufficient text", then it definitely does not "always work".

Simply put, Vivaldi's language auto-detection is very poor in its current state, and the fact that it fails so frequently for so many people does not paint a good picture for the feature. You say it is because people do not "select sufficient text", and that "once you know this limitation, you learn to select more text than you actually need"... but what if you literary cannot do that!? And this is not some edge case; this situation arises quite often if you frequent multi-lingual sites that normally present short texts, like Mastodon and Twitter which are micro-blogging platforms.

Take the following posts as examples:

Please explain to me how you could possibly "select more text than you actually need" when there is nothing else to select.

Needless to say, requiring the user to know that auto-detection must have a sufficiently large text selection for it to work is a very poor UX - made significantly worse by the fact that auto-detect remains the default language selection for the source even when a sufficient text selection was not made to trigger it... You can't hope to tame people's expectations of the feature if you're constantly giving the impression that it should be working. As a matter of fact, it would be significantly better UX if auto-detect was only offered when sufficient text selections were made. Otherwise, the translation UI should indicate somewhere that a larger text selection is required for language auto-detection to work.

So in its current state, Vivaldi's translation feature is, imo, very lackluster compared to other translation services that have significantly better UXs, and far less limitations in language auto-detection.

AltCode

@Pesala I concur with @iAN-CooG, as I've seen this before too. The source and destination languages are remembered, but translation still fails... Here's a few videos that should hopefully be more clear:

(Yes, I'm just reselecting the same text again after making the language source/destination changes, but the bug remains present when selecting other texts of that page without reloading).

Pesala

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

I don't get why you feel the need to repeat this so much.

To counter the false claim that the translator never works, or almost never. When insufficient text is selected, manually selecting the source language works.

Manually Selected Language.png

Just stop saying that it never works. It is disrespectful to the developers who spent so much time implementing and improving this feature. Sure, there is more to do, but the same goes for many other features that are less than 100% perfect.

The Panel gives a warning when autodetect fails, but the dialog does not — it just leaves the source field unchanged.

Yes, other translation features work better, but they lack privacy and/or cost money.

barbudo2005

Forgive me for repeating what I said in another post about the translation feature and that it can be extended to any built-in feature:

"We could say then that it all comes down to the threshold of satisfaction each one has for a specific subject.

That is to say, if for topic X:

The built-in feature has a level of 70% and your threshold satisfaction is 30%, then the built-in feature will completely fulfill its purpose with all those users with threshold below 70%.

If the built-in feature has a level of 40% and your threshold is 80%, then the built-in feature will fall short and your best option is to look for an alternative."

HellbillyDeluxe

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

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've made this feature request when Translate was first released, but the Vivaldi Team has never touched Translate since its first release. Which is a shame, because it could really be good and helpful. But since the Team is so small, my guess is they prioritize on releasing new features to create Media Buzz, but never/rarely fix/enhance existing ones.

Ayespy

@HellbillyDeluxe Vivaldi does not provide the Translate function. It is provided by Lingvanex, who specialize in translation (but also have a small crew and a huge job) Vivaldi only links to the Lingvanex function. Lingvanex is free and does not capture and sell your data so, for Vivaldi purposes, it is preferable to Google or one of the translation services that a) costs the browser developer money to deploy and/or b) captures and sells your data.

Catweazle

@Ayespy, Lingvanex isn't free it's a paid service, they only offer a free trial, see https://lingvanex.com, even the Cloud API, which Vivaldi, I think, use, cost money, and privacy, well...
https://lingvanex.com/privacy-policy/

mib3berlin

@Catweazle
Hi, to my knowledge Vivaldi use it's own Lingvanex server so I guess the Vivaldi privacy-policy is what we have as Vivaldi user.
One feature as remember the source language would fix a lot of complains about the translation feature.
No idea why they cant fix this, seems simple for a non developer.

Cheers, mib

Catweazle

@mib3berlin, maybe , but I don't know if the Machine Learning function of Lingvanex is include in the Vivaldi self hosted API, when there are no connection to the Linvanex servers. That maybe explain in somewhat this issues reportet by a lot of users.
Currently I'm experimenting with Reverso, an Europan translator (GDPR), which I use in the WebPanel, which is pretty complete, even offers verb conjugation and grammar check.

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

mib3berlin

@Catweazle
Interesting, I will test this for a while.
Many user need full page translation and this also does not work very well with Vivaldi translate.

Ayespy

@Catweazle Lingvanex has a deal with Vivaldi - so it does not cost users anything as provided on the Vivaldi platform.

HellbillyDeluxe

@Ayespy So basic missing features like remembering the language it last translated to or setting the language it should translate to are not provided by Vivaldi, but Lingvanex as well?

Of course, I know about the cooperation with Lingvanex and the privacy features it offers. But what good is a privacy-focused tool if it doesn't work as well as Google Translate or DeepL?

Because as it is, the Translate feature in Vivaldi really isn't an alternative to other translation services, because it lacks basic features. And since it has never seen any improvements since it first got introduced, it's just one of many half-baked features Vivaldi has to offer. And this is quite frustrating, to be honest.

I really wish Vivaldi would focus on polishing existing features for the next couple releases.
While this might not create big Media buzz, it is long overdue, in my opinion.

Pesala

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

And since it has never seen any improvements since it first got introduced

Just stop repeating the falsehoods. It does not make any difference how many times you repeat it, it is still false. Do some research by reading the linked articles.

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

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.

At the time of the article, there was only the Translate Panel. Now there is the option to translate selected text. We all know that there are several limitations to the feature, but please acknowledge the extensive work that has been done in the last two years.

Petter: Work is already underway to implement the translation of the selected text on web pages. We have also started planning for exposing translation to other parts of the UI, such as Vivaldi Mail, in a panel, and possibly other places, too. Stay tuned!

HellbillyDeluxe

@Pesala Agree to disagree then. Adding new languages is not the same as improving basic functionality, such as the things I've mentioned.

Catweazle

I occasionally use the Vivaldi translator to translate a page. What I have noticed is that it never translates the entire page, but only the content of the screen, but the translation is generally good.
I know it has been improved since its introduction in Vivaldi, and I appreciate the work put in. I also know that a translator is a very complex program and requires a lot of dedication, difficult with the small team that Vivaldi has and for this reason it is logical that the functionality is not that offered by other translators from companies that can dedicate themselves exclusively to the development of this .
Therefore, at least for the moment, it can only be a complementary function to a third-party translator, if this function is often needed.

It is similar to the screenshot function, it works well as such, but it cannot replace a dedicated app, when you also need to edit the screenshot or share it with others. This is why, as in the case of the translator, I use also a Desktop app (ShareX), which offers me infinite more possibilities, editing, sharing, even OCR, casting, cap5ure of documents......

It is not to despise these functions that Vivaldi has, these always depend on each person's needs, whether they are useful or not.