The web is a truly international platform—did you know Wikipedia has nearly 3 million articles in German and nearly 2 million in Spanish?—and thanks to the built-in translation tools that now come baked in to the most popular browsers, a language barrier needn’t come between you and whatever you want to read online.
Using your browser’s translation feature can be a useful way of broadening your horizons, discovering new publications, and making new friends, and these tools can also come in handy if you’re in the process of trying to learn another language too.
Increasingly, web browsers will automatically detect a website written in a language that’s not English, and will either instantly translate the pages or throw up a dialog box asking if that’s what you want to do, but there are a few more customization options available if you dig deeper into the tools.
Here’s how to find the translation features in the biggest browsers—Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari—on both desktop and on mobile.
Google Chrome
Translation options in Chrome.
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Chrome translates sites automatically by default; you can use the pop-up to the right of the address bar if you’d like to go back to the original language. You can also click the little Google Translate button to the right of the address bar to switch languages, and select the three dots to adjust your settings to always translate a given language, or never translate it in future.
You also get the option to Never translate this site if you don’t want the translation to run automatically (you can still run it manually from the same dialog). Another option is to highlight a block of text and then right-click on it—you can then choose Translate Selection to English to only translate the text you’ve highlighted.
With Chrome on Android and iOS, a pop-up appears every time you load a page in a foreign language asking if it should be translated—you can bring this pop-up back by tapping the three dots (top right on Android, bottom right on iOS) then Translate. Tap the gear icon on the pop-up to access more options for translating this particular page and this particular language.
Microsoft Edge
The pop-up bar on Edge on Android.
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Open up a webpage in a foreign language using Microsoft Edge, and a dialog box at the top of the screen will ask if translation is required. Click Translate to go ahead with that, or More to get at additional options (including automatically translating or never translating that particular language in the future). You can bring this dialog box back at any time by clicking on the translation button on the right of the address bar, which looks like an “a” next to a Japanese character.
You’re able to switch back and forth between translations, correct Edge if it’s incorrectly identified the foreign language, and disable translation for a specific site. The right-click option is here too, as it is with Chrome: Select some text on screen, right-click on it, then choose Translate selection to English from the pop-up menu.
As for the Edge app on Android and iOS, loading up a foreign website will trigger a small translation bar at the top: Tap Translate to accept the translation. Tap on the identified languages (Android) or the gear icon (iOS) to get to the other options, like disabling translation for this site). To bring the panel back later, tap the three horizontal lines (bottom right), swipe left, then tap Translate.
Mozilla Firefox
Firefox does all of its translations locally.
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Using Firefox, when you load up a page in a foreign language, you’ll see a pop-up appear asking if you want to translate it—and all the translation is done on your local device for extra privacy. Click Translate to confirm, or the gear icon for extra options: You can disable this pop-up, always or never translate this language, or never translate this website, for example.
The pop-up and its options can be brought back via the translate button (two small characters) to the right of the address bar). If you just need to translate a certain section of the website you’re looking at, highlight the relevant text, right-click on it, then choose Translate Selection to English from the menu.
For Firefox on Android, you’ll see a similar translation prompt box pop up on screen when you view a website in a foreign language. As on the desktop, tap the small translation button on the address bar to bring this box back, and tap on the gear icon for more options for this particular page and language.
As of this writing, that feature unfortunately hasn’t made its way over to Firefox for iOS, but it’s likely to do so in the near future.
Apple Safari
Safari offers a more basic translation service.
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Using Safari on macOS, when you open a webpage written in a language other than English, nothing happens automatically. You’ll need to click on the little icon on the right of the address bar (two small speech bubbles), then choose Translate to English. Click the same icon again if you want to go back to the original language.
You don’t get as many options to play around with as you do on other browsers, but you can translate specific blocks of text as well as whole pages: Select some text, right-click on the selection, then choose Translate to see a translation pop up on screen.
Translating text in Safari on iOS is just as straightforward: Click the small AA icon on the left of the address bar at the bottom of the screen, and pick the Translate to English option. If you need to go back, tap the same icon again and choose View Original from the menu.
