[Feature Request] translation feature

[ebrulato]

A button to translate a message in the user's language

[alerque]

Personally I find the built in "translate this" on social networks to be less useful than it should be. Even the big name folks like Twitter and Facebook don't use the best engines for each possible language. I find an external app often works better, but to make that a meaningful experience it can't be more that a tap away. For programs that have tap-to-copy features this can be combined with Google Translate's clipboard monitoring and auto translation. This brings a translation in 2 or 3 taps depending on the app. Other apps that can read content in on shares would be 4-5 taps away if #147 were to be fixed.

That's not to say I'd be apposed to an internal translator that used some API and did it in place, but it should be optional and the UI should support getting the text out to external apps as well.

[ebrulato]

I agree with you @alerque and the purpose is just to add a button to get a translation :)

[nailyk-fr]

Useless comment to subscribe.
FI some projects use weblate. Fully open source.

[likeadragonmaid]

Add an option in settings to auto translate all toots or an option to translate individual toots. You can use google translate API (free for unlimited use AFAIK) from google translate extension from chrome browser (someone posted it on stackoverflow)

API: https://translate.googleapis.com/translate_a/single?client=gtx&sl=auto&tl=en&dt=t&q=こんにちは

You can replace "auto" if with source language if you want to disable auto detection and "en" for choosing a target language. Replace "こんにちは" with text you want to translate.

JSON response:

[[["Hello","こんにちは",null,null,1] ] ,null,"ja",null,null,null,1.0,[] ,[["ja"] ,null,[1.0] ,["ja"] ] ]

[suoko]

Now mastodon has added translation as a feature

[ShellWen]

I need it😭

[ozkanpakdil]

I manage to translate the text in the post but could not find a way to replace the text in the post but open a new dialog to show the translation, you can see it here video

screen-20221227-113431.mp4

got rejected but good thing I installed my phone and it's nice to have
#3107

[x64x2]

This needs to be addressed in the next update

[alerque]

Another aspect of this to consider is a) choice and b) API availability. There are totally free and even open source options out there, but their quality varies for some language. Of the better free but not open translation platforms, some are better than others for certain language pairs. Lastly there are paid options that for some languages are even better.

For example right now DeepL is one of the best machine translation APIs out there, but it is not free except in small trial doses. This limitation would make it impractical for use by Tusky with their own API key, but if users could supply their own keys it could be awesome.

My suggestion is implement things in a generic enough way to allow the user to setup the app with preferences for which translation engine to use, and even to customize the options. Then they can choose a free platform based on preference / suitability for their commonly used language pairs, and if they select a non-free platform they can input their own API key.

[connyduck]

#4307

[ozkanpakdil]

@connyduck how can I enable this feature in my tusky app ? on mobile ? I am not admin on the server side.

or is there documentation showing how translate works ?

[timnolte]

@ozkanpakdil I'm pretty certain that this is completely reliant on the server supporting translations. So if you don't have the ability to translate when using the web UI for your instance then you won't have the ability to translate in the app.

[timnolte]

@ozkanpakdil so yeah, I just looked at the code changes that implemented this and it does in fact require your instance to support translations, this isn't an app/user-only supported feature.

[ozkanpakdil]

@timnolte meaning this issue still standing, and issue is closed ?

I and @Joshix-1 actually done a nice client side stranslation without hurting anyone, can you put it somewhere in the settings to have client side translation ? I know it is not the best solution but after all it will be closed until user is openning it ?

#3228

[timnolte]

@ozkanpakdil well this issue specifically doesn't really request an app-only translation option, so technically this is resolved by instance translation support.

[timnolte]

@ozkanpakdil so #3228 looks to me about using the Mastodon API and this is reliant on the instance supporting translations.

[ozkanpakdil]

@timnolte About #3228 I dont know the details just saw the video and thought it was doing client side anyway you can check #3107 I know I can carry out my code and merge it to forever :) but I just want a small option in the app to do the translate