Firefox Translations

Firefox Translations is a webextension that enables client side in-page translations for web browsers.

Instructions to run

• Install Firefox Nightly
• Clone this repo and run npm install
• Run npm run once and wait until Nightly starts
• Go to about:config and set extensions.experiments.enabled to true
• Browse to a page in any of the supported languages (https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-translations-models/#currently-supported-languages) to have the translation option to appear

Development

Updating telemetry schema

After adding new metrics to extension/model/telemetry/metrics.yaml or pings to extension/model/telemetry/pings.yaml, run

bash scripts/update-telemetry-schema.sh

to regenerate JS telemetry schema.

Updating bergamot-translator WASM module

After replacing extension/controller/translation/bergamot-translation-worker.js, run

bash scripts/update-bergamot-translator.sh

to regenerate JS version file. This version is reported in telemetry.

Testing

Preliminary builds

One can test preliminary versions of the extension in Firefox Nightly since an artifact is generated on every commit. In order to do that, go to the Github Action, click at the commit you wish to test, and then click to download the artifact as a zip file at the end of the page. With that:

• Download Firefox Nightly
• Type about:addons in the navigation bar, click on the gear to he right, then on install from a file and load the saved zip file.
• Type about:config in the navigation bar again, and switch the following preferences:
  • extensions.translations.disabled to true
  • extensions.experiments.enabled to true
  • javascript.options.wasm_simd_wormhole to true
  • xpinstall.signatures.required to false

And then you should be able to use the extension.