Mastodon has a built-in translation system for posts in other languages.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

Mastodon has a built-in translation system for posts in other languages. For it to work, three things have to happen:

- Your server has to offer the service
- Your language settings have to be correct
- The person posting has to use the correct language settings

If all these are ok, you will see a "Translate" link below the post or in the post's ⋯ menu when you encounter a post in a foreign language.

Lots more info and questions answered at:

️ https://fedi.tips/is-there-a-built-in-language-translation-system-on-mastodon

#FediTips #Mastodon

[jamestdg@mastodon.world]

@FediTips also you may have to use the correct client. The mobile client I have installed kinda... Lacks the feature.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@JamesTDG

Good point, I'll update the guide.

[rasos@fairmove.net]

@FediTips @JamesTDG This works well on fairmove.net with open source libretranslate hosted on a powerful kubernetes cluster. However, not all ltheir language models are perfect, but you get at least the context of a toot.

[thilo@fromm.social]

@FediTips Mastodon admins may use a variety of translation back-ends; with self-hosted libretranslate arguably being the most privacy friendly (data never leaves the server).

The Libretranslate docker image (https://hub.docker.com/r/libretranslate/libretranslate) doesn't ship any languages, so on first start it needs to download multiple gigabytes of data.

To work around this I've been publishing self-contained libretranslate container images here: https://github.com/t-lo/LibreTranslate-ghcr-publisher/pkgs/container/libretranslate that include all supported translation languages.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@rasos

Another good point, I've added a note to the end of the guide reminding people that computer translations are never 100% accurate.

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@FediTips or if you use Phantom you can turn on auto translate and then it doesn't matter what the post was marked as

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@thilo

Thanks for that, I've added a note to the end of the guide that admins can self-host too.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@liaizon

I'm not familiar with Phantom, do you have a link?

Is it a third party translation add-on?

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@FediTips opps auto correct

[maartjes@mastodon.nl]

@FediTips

I have never seen a translate link. Maybe because I read in my browser? I would be happy with the possibility

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@liaizon

Ahhh, that makes more sense now, thanks!

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@maartjeS

Translate links will appear in the browser if your server supports translation and if the language settings of you and the person posting are correct.

You might want to ask your server admin if they have translation on their server? Not all servers do as it costs extra and the admin has to pay for it.

Your server's admin account is @support