An unofficial Firefox extension for the LibreTranslate API
If you are downloading or cloning this repo then you will need to load this as a temporary Add-on in Firefox.
Basically goto about:debugging On the left hand side click the menu option: This Firefox then click the button near the top with label Load Temporary Add-on and then navigate to and select the manifest.json file for this repo.
This Add-on is available on the Firefox Add-ons Marketplace.
Once the extension is installed you will see a blue box with three characters in it appear on the right side of your browser's toolbar. Click it and then click the button labeled Extension Settings that will appear in the popup. Here you will be able to set the URL, port, and optional API key of the LibreTranslate API that you are using or self-hosting. You can also configure the default languages and the highlight color of the translate in place feature. The default API is https://translate.terraprint.co . It was previously https://translate.argosopentech.com which is currently free to use, courtesy of Argos Open Tech. That may change in the future so I highly recommend that you self-host the API if you are able to do so. Other public APIs are listed on the LibreTranslate github repo.
Because LibreTranslate is open source, it is possible for users to host their own instance of the API. Self-hosting frees users from API limits on requests, can improve performance, and provides offline availability if hosted on the local machine or within the local network. Installation instructions are provided on the LibreTranslate github repo.
Once your self-hosted instance is installed enter the URL (with protocol string, e.g http://) and port into the extension settings to begin using it.
The core feature of the extension is the ability to highlight text with your cursor and see an inline translation. Once text has been highlighted, hold the Alt key to see the translation. Releasing the Alt key returns the highlighted text to its original language. This feature is very useful for language learners that have limited vocabulary in the source language of the text.
Clicking the extension icon on the toolbar displays a popup. The popup contains two textboxes that users can interact with. Text entered into the left box will be translated into the target language in the right text box. This translation works both ways, so by entering text of the chosen language in the right textbox will translate it to the language selected for the left box.
This feature is not yet implemented.