One of the most requested features on Mastodon is a built-in language translation system, where you can click on a post and it automatically translates it into your language.

If this is important to you, and if you are comfortable using Github, please give this issue a thumbs up to let the developers know that this feature is wanted:

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i

(I thought this was already being worked on, but I cannot find any official announcements saying this.)

#Mastodon #Translation #Translations #Translate #Languages

@feditips Only if it doesn't use e.g. Google. I'm extremely skeeved out by the thought of people having a built-in button to violate our privacy.

@IceWolf @feditips I agree. The feature would be nice, but pretty sure it's way more useful at the ✨browser✨ level.

Like, Vivaldi has it built in, and I think Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge do too... so... Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari are lagging behind (again).

vivaldi.com/features/translate

@matt @IceWolf

To give some context, it must be the most common question I got asked when the big new wave of members joined: where's the translate button? It's like people just expect it to be there.

Whether or not it is more useful through a browser, people are looking for it in Mastodon itself (shrug)

@feditips @matt I'm probably gonna go thumbs-/down/ it (assuming it uses some cloud service) 'cause, yeah, not cool.

Better to explain to people that it's not really a good thing to ship people's private discussions to Google. (And yeah private discussions do happen on here, followers-only scope is great.)

@IceWolf @matt

It's not using a cloud service, it would be using an independent instance of a free open source service.

It wouldn't be going to Google.

@feditips @matt Yeah, but is that instance /run by the same people as the Masto instance/? Even if it's open source, if it's some other service run by other people we don't know, it's still not okay. It's not /as horrifyingly bad/, but that doesn't make it good.

@IceWolf @matt

I am assuming it would be run by someone connected to Mastodon.

The third party Mastodon app Fedilab (@apps)has actually gone ahead and set up its own instance, you can try it here:

translate.fedilab.app

It works in the Fedilab app too.

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net @feditips@mstdn.social @matt@oslo.town @apps@toot.fedilab.app Wait, why? DeepL is pretty great and the way Misskey does it, you're not sending over any personal data.

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps It's still a random third-party we don't know or trust.

There shouldn't be a button built in to send our posts there.

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps Also, have you seen all the uproar whenever a fedi scraping instance comes along? Those get blocked quick.

So yeah, no, I won't just "expect it to be scraped".

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net @feditips@mstdn.social @matt@oslo.town @apps@toot.fedilab.app the thing is, it's just post text. Not usernames or IDs, not metadata, not IPs. It provides more upsides than downsides.

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@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps Nobody cares about shipping off our post text to a company without consent?

That's a huge downside right there.

If we'd checked a box saying "let people submit my posts to third-party translation services through the UI", that'd be one thing.

But that's not the case, it's just A Thing with no way to say "hey, no, stop that".

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net @feditips@mstdn.social @matt@oslo.town @apps@toot.fedilab.app its basically the same as copy - pasting the content into DeepL yourself. It's just handier for ppl like me who follow a lot of Japanese and German people as someone who only reads English.

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps I see quite a few German posts on here and I just let it baffle me.

If you copy-paste it into DeepL yourself, then it's /your/ fault. If it's built into the server? Then the server is pushing it, recommending it, going "here have this handy button to violate people's privacy".

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps /Yes there fucking is./

You're shipping off our post text.

That's still violating our privacy.

(before you go "well there's no identifying information!", /what about people's names in the posts./ That gets sent off.)

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps The posts /themselves/ are private information, which... should be obvious.

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net @feditips@mstdn.social @matt@oslo.town @apps@toot.fedilab.app Your text post is going to be shipped off whether I click the three dots -> translate or whether I select it and right click -> translate with DeepL. Why limit accessibility options?

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps Because, like I said like three or four times already, there is a MASSIVE difference between doing it on your own initiative and having the server recommend it to you.

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net @feditips@mstdn.social @matt@oslo.town @apps@toot.fedilab.app IMO a server recommending it is just more accessibility options and removing language barriers. You have to go into a submenu anyway so it's not pushing it in your face.

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps Sure, it's removing language barriers.

It's also /shipping our posts off to strangers without our consent./

Just because you CAN do something and that something might be helpful does not mean that something is a good thing. There are consequences too.

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps What about people talking about perfectly-fine-but-illegal things like, say, being gay in a homophobic country?

Shouldn't fedi be safe for them too?

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net @feditips@mstdn.social @matt@oslo.town @apps@toot.fedilab.app image description: "Twitter the only place where well articulated sentences still get misinterpreted. You can say "I like pancakes" and somebody will say "So you hate waffles?" No bitch. Dats a whole new sentence. Wtf is you talkin about. 1:34 23 Oct'l7 61.4K Retweets 146K Likes"

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps And, I'm extrapolating from "making it easy and recommended for other people to ship everything you say to a third party you may not be able to trust", which is what you /seem/ to be advocating for, it sounds like. (Are you not? Actual question. If not, then what?)

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps (because like, you're going "have a button for people to ship off your posts to DeepL or whoever".)

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net @feditips@mstdn.social @matt@oslo.town @apps@toot.fedilab.app Nobody at DeepL is going to be like "oh wow someone translated 'I like kissing men', lemme reverse search that exact string, use the power of magic to trace it back to one fedi post, use my secret hacker skills to fully dox that person and send it to their government".

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps No, but they could use that to build profiles of you and figure out that you're gay (see: Google doing that exact thing), and give that to the police.

But anyway, the police is only one example of why it's bad. It's also just bad to have our posts getting shipped off like that at ALL.

@thatonecalculator @feditips @matt @apps But like I said. I should probably leave, because it feels like you're starting from a point of "translation services good" and pulling out anything to justify that. So this is going nowhere, and will continue to go nowhere.

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rant on the inevitable march of surveillance capitalism 

@thatonecalculator This is an extremely naive view on the value of mass collection of pseudo-private data that may have been valid two decades ago, if even then.

In particular, it assumes not only that DeepL is run the way we hope it is, and the way it is run right now actually looks pretty good, but also that any future acquisition of DeepL will.

Who will BTOV and Benchmark sell to when they exit? What poison pills and data-non-retention policies does DeepL have in place today to make sure your data doesn't fall into the wrong hands?

@matt @feditips @apps @IceWolf
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