I was wondering on why isn’t there a default plugin enabled for auto post translation of non English to English and vice-versa.
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It’s costly, and also we have many languages used by our Community, but as far as I understand only one destination language can be used per instance.
For me using an automatic translation integrated to the browsers looks more flexible.
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I don’t see any translation option for the forum page containing non English posts.
If I visit a non English website I get 
this option automatically unlike our forum.
Could there be a setting you may have missed ?
Yes, it’s a setting of the Google Translator in your browser. You need to set a preferred destination language in its settings and enable a context menu. You may also configure it to do not offer to translate some languages and add which languages do you want to be translated automatically.
And you can always to select it in the menu (three dots - Translate).
I have above setting enabled. Also under Automatically translate these languages I have added Russian, German and other languages, yet it won’t translate our non English forum posts.
I think the probable reason for translation option not popping up is
Since forum is in English, it doesn’t see the forum post as a separate entity, in order to offer translation.
I do not know, I always can click three dots and select - translate. If the forum would be completely on another language, then Chrome would detect it.
As far as I can see, it not always can detect mixed languages automatically.
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I thought so too but I guess having a third party translator would be a better option. Since Chrome isn’t working as intended.
It’s not a third party, as far as I can see it would use the same Google Translate, but via API. The downside that you need to configure the target language, I’m not sure that it could be configured individually per user.
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There is a free and open source programm, which can translate many languages, see https://libretranslate.com/. This program can be hosted theoretically on the forum server, right?
To reduce server cpu time, the translated text can be saved. Whould that be an option? There won’t be additional costs for storj.
libretranslate Example from a forum post to english
Have a nice day!
But what’s the point? People write in their native language to minimize ambiguity. Passing this through machine translation would negate this benefit. In fact, they could have done it themselves if they wanted to before posting — but they chose not to. Not because they are arrogant and lazy but because machine translation can and still does lose nuance, and they won’t know; because of their English was at the level sufficient to detect that — they could have written in English to begin with.
Translating when reading and only if needed is much better — translation tools always evolve, and some people speak multiple languages. For example, I don’t have any issues reading and comprehending German and Russian, auto translation would be a detriment, I would hate to have to unscrew up the machine translated version to guess what the poster could have hypothetically say.
Don’t get me wrong. I would not “auto convert” everything to English, but rather have a button (an option) on the forum post whenever a language is not English. With that button, all people who are not fluent in that particular language will have a button to mechanically convert the text, knowing that there will be a loss of speech, so to speak.
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+1
Its tedious to open up Google translate then copy paste non English text, convert our response in their language then paste it. A single button would avoid all this copy pasta and save time for both poster and the person replying. OP would get faster response than waiting for someone to go through all the copy pasta or wait for someone who understands the language.
I’m sure eventually the forum upgrades will include such a feature. Wait long enough and it will probably have an AI assitant as well, because everything does now.
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Increasingly, internet forums turn into machines talking to machines and selling each other ads. The whole aification of everything is disgusting. It erases individuality and everyone turns into a patronizing LLM.
Back to face to face interaction then, at town squares.
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Honestly, I do not know. When I open a context menu I can select “Translate to English”:
The same, if I click the three dots button in my browser:
It also works for the selected text.
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It shows the translation option in the address bar after selecting the non English text.
It seems to work this way rather than how I intended it to work.
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But you see, this requires the use of chrome. This on its own is a dealbreaker for many.
On the other hand, perhaps there are plugins available for better browsers, from better services.
For smartphones this is also built it.
.
It also works in Brave and Edge (but the last one of course uses MS services).
Perhaps it can work on any Chromium-based.
And of course it works on Android phones too. But if you install the Google Translate (or any other similar I believe), it adds more features and not only for browsers, but also other apps.
lol I was clicking around and apparently in Safari there is an option to translate everything to target language. It even translates nicknames 
And Firefox too 
(I was actually surprised)
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