# Firefox Translations

26 Hacker News commenters recommended Firefox Translations and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for translating web pages on-device, so text never leaves the browser, with decent quality. Critics say output can be wrong and that quality trails Google Translate.

## Why people recommend it

- Translates pages privately on-device (7 comments): "I appreciate that I can conveniently translate things with a reasonable degree of accuracy without having to send that text to god knows where." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46290000)) "Being able to read foreign language pages without feeding your browsing history into Google Translate is pretty cool." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49935043)) "The local translation in Firefox is quite good, and I love that I can translate pages entirely on my machine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960791))
- Translation quality is good (5 comments): "It's useful and it's a perfect application for local LLM to be better than the equivalent corporate services." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859289)) "The local translation in Firefox is quite good, and I love that I can translate pages entirely on my machine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960791)) "On device translation of websites for example is much better than the alternatives." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133902))
- Built into the browser (5 comments): "I love having built-in local natural language translation implemented by AI, which Firefox provides." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45929071)) "The builtin translation feature [0] is LLM-based [1], and that adds a ton to my browsing experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45861159)) "the (actually innovative!) idea of baking small ML models into the browser" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49724514))
- Replaces external translation services (3 comments): "I use it frequently and haven't had any reason to switch to an external offering." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48986478)) "I found the quality to be good enough to very rarely need an external service." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48985319)) "Yes, Translate is the only one I want - and we already have that!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295742))

## What people warn about

- Quality trails Google or is clumsy (4 comments): "Perfectly clear and comprehensible. It's not fluent English, there are comma splices everywhere" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46414635)) "Most of the time when I tried it the Firefox translations were obviously wrong or nonsense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039319)) "it's usually faster, as there is no network latency" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48989844))
- Translate option sometimes missing or broken (2 comments): "The button is there and is clickable, and there even is an animation near the address bar, but it doesn't actually do anything." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993943)) "I've been enjoying the Firefox translate, but for some reason sometimes it doesn't show the option to engage it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310221))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Google Translate](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-translate.md): 64 recommend
- [Kagi Translate](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kagi-translate.md): 50 recommend
- [DeepL Translator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepl.md): 25 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Firefox Translations", https://hackerapproved.com/p/firefox-translations/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).