If you need to translate a web page in Firefox an add-on or visit to another website is required, but not for much longer. Mozilla is set to add translation as a standard feature of its browser along with the added benefit of complete privacy.
As ZDNet reports, Mozilla is following Google in adding an automatic page translation feature to its browser. However, unlike in Chrome where Google sends the text to a server in the cloud to perform the translation, Firefox would handle it client-side, meaning it's never shared with a third-party.
In order to achieve client-side translation, Mozilla will use Bergamot, which is a project to "add and improve client-side machine translation in a web browser." The project is coordinated by the University of Edinburgh and this year received a 3 million euro ($3.35 million) contribution from the European Union towards its continued development.
Above is a quick demo of Bergamot in action, which shows how quickly the translation can happen:
By performing the translation on the client-side, not only is user privacy preserved but it also bodes well for speed of translations as there's no waiting for a server to respond with the results. It also opens the way for translation services in environments where access to the internet is either limited or unavailable and without adding any cost because this is an open source project.
There's no firm date yet as to when Firefox will ship with Bergamot, but the translation engine is already stable and Mozilla is hiring engineers to help integrate it. I expect Mozilla to make sure everyone knows when it does ship as a privacy-focused, client-side translation solution is a rather unique feature for a web browser to have available.