New Update Vivaldi gets a privacy preserving translation service

[silversurfer]

Vivaldi Technologies released a new browser snapshot of the next version of the company's today. The new snapshot introduces a much requested feature: web translations.

Up until now, Vivaldi users have to rely on web services or browser extensions to introduce translation functionality in the web browser. Most extensions rely on Google Translate or Microsoft Translate, and that means that connections to these services are made whenever translation functionality is accessed.

Vivaldi's translate feature uses a different approach, one that preserves the privacy of users. Instead of relying on an external service like Google Translate, it is using a self-hosted service. While that is not the same as local translations, something that Mozilla hopes to introduce with Project Bergamot, it is preferable to sending information to third-party services.

Vivaldi Techologies partnered up with Lingvanex, a company that has created translation services, including APIs and applications. If you have never heard of them before, you may head over to the main website to test the translation service right on the site.

Vivaldi's implementation is somewhat limited right now, as the number of languages is limited when compared to the supported languages by Lingvanex. Plans are underway to introduce support for additional languages and functionality to the Vivaldi web browser in the future.

For now, it is a "public test" of the functionality.

If you have updated Vivaldi to the latest version already -- you can check the version by loading vivaldi://about/ and the feature was introduced in Vivaldi Browser snapshot 3.8.2238.3 -- then you may use the translation feature already. Whenever you visit a non-native language, e.g. a German page in an English language version of Vivaldi, you will see a new translation icon in the address bar. To be precise, on the right side of the address bar.

Activate it to open the "translate page" menu. It allows you to select a target language at the time of writing, but nothing else. The initial implementation supports 22 different languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Icelandic, Russian and Turkish.

Select the translate button to translate the entire page to the selected language. A quick test with several German pages and the translation language English was only partially successful. On some pages, e.g. this Wikipedia page or this Heise page, only some of the content was translated. The result was a mix of German and English words in some sentences.

Sentences with full translations sounded good on first glance. A quick test of French to English translations painted a better picture, as these did not include the mix of languages on the translated pages. Improvements will be made before the feature lands in Vivaldi stable.

Vivaldi gets a privacy preserving translation service - gHacks Tech News

Vivaldi Technologies released a new browser snapshot of the next version of the company's today. The new snapshot introduces a much requested feature: web translations.

www.ghacks.net

 

[Tiamati]

Very interesting. I don't use Vivaldi, but this functionality is essential for a good browser. I wish Brave did that too

 

[Divine_Barakah]

The only reason Vivaldi is not my default browser is because it does not offer iOS version. I know it would be basic as iOS browsers are modified versions of Safari (correct me if I am wrong), but how am I supposed to access my bookmarks? I hope one day they develop Vivaldi for iOS.

 

[Ink]

They added native M1 support, could iOS be in the pipelines?

Vivaldi fires up performance | Vivaldi Browser

Performance gains dominate the new update of the Vivaldi browser. The update also includes native support for Apple M1 machines and more customizable options in built-in features.

vivaldi.com

 

[Divine_Barakah]

They added native M1 support, could iOS be in the pipelines?

Vivaldi fires up performance | Vivaldi Browser

Performance gains dominate the new update of the Vivaldi browser. The update also includes native support for Apple M1 machines and more customizable options in built-in features.

vivaldi.com

I asked them about it and they were reluctant to answer, so I guess no.

 

[gigi64]

Is vivaldi good in terms of security?

 

[silversurfer]

Is vivaldi good in terms of security?

Vivaldi looks like the same in terms of security than Brave, Opera and other well-known chromium-based browsers, honestly we have to mention that Chrome and also new Edge are the most "secure" browsers as both are developed/maintained by a lot of more workers compared to smaller companies.

Vivaldi's biggest downside was always a noticeable slowness (more features of browser settings) compared to Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera.
I believe recently Vivaldi looks like improved speed while browsing and overall performance, but probably depends on every system hardware...

 

[Kongo]

The only reason Vivaldi is not my default browser is because it does not offer iOS version. I know it would be basic as iOS browsers are modified versions of Safari (correct me if I am wrong), but how am I supposed to access my bookmarks? I hope one day they develop Vivaldi for iOS.

Whats wrong with using Safari? It's well maintained by Apple and is really good in terms of privacy/security.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

Whats wrong with using Safari? It's well maintained by Apple and is really good in terms of privacy/security.

it seems that you did not get my point. I want a browser to use on all platforms to sync my favourites across devices, Vivaldi would have been the best option if only it supported iOS. I cannot use Safari on Windows.

 

[Kongo]

it seems that you did not get my point. I want a browser to use on all platforms to sync my favourites across devices, Vivaldi would have been the best option if only it supported iOS. I cannot use Safari on Windows.

Oh, my bad then...

 

[spaceoctopus]

@silversurfer You are right, the slowness was a very annoying problem with the browser. Using it regularly for almost 5 months now,Android version too, in terms of resource usage and performance, there are huge improvements. Also, the browser integrated adblocker is quite good, very often blocking what Firefox misses, even on strict mode.