Mozilla launched an extension to its Firefox browser, which will allow you to translate sites in the browser without using the cloud. In this way, the data translated by the user remains private.

The extensions were created in collaboration with European universities under the EU-funded Bergamot Project. The aim was to develop a set of tools for machine translation that would preserve privacy. To do this, the translator must work locally. Drivers, language models and translation algorithms must be located and work on the user’s computer without the use of the cloud.

In addition, two new features had to be introduced. The first is the translation of forms, which allows users to enter text in their native language and immediately translate it into the language of the page. The second function is to evaluate the quality of the translation, which would highlight the potentially low quality translation so that the user can correct mistakes.

The extension is already available at Firefox Store for installation on Firefox Nightly, Beta and General Release. The company has also developed a comprehensive training for those who want to help complement the translator with new languages.