🔣 Translate chat messages

[nickvergessen]

• Since Nextcloud 26 a core API to translate strings is available in the server: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/blob/a0ecc37d036ace7bd32675f89b046bf0bff1fe89/core/Controller/TranslationApiController.php#L37
  • API docs at feat(developer): Document translation API documentation#10047
  • Capability at feat(chat): Add capabilities for translation options #9321
• There should be a … Message actions to translate messages.
• A modal opens translating the message to the currently selected user language and allowing in a dropdown to translate to other languages

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• Android Translate chat messages talk-android#2931
• iOS Translate chat messages talk-ios#1185
• Web Translate chat messages [web frontend] #9528

[nickvergessen]

• API docs at feat(developer): Document translation API documentation#10047
• Capability at feat(chat): Add capabilities for translation options #9321

[jancborchardt]

A modal opens translating the message to the currently selected user language and allowing in a dropdown to translate to other languages

This sounds a bit complicated – I would rather go with how Instagram and Twitter do it and have a simple "Translate this message" action which only translates it to your language and places it below the original.
(Also talked about with @AndyScherzinger

We could of course have a modal to translate to other languages too, but that should be a separate second step. Otherwise it’s basically having full DeepL/Gtranslate app in there where you still need to manually do everything → instead of just simply clicking a button.

[AndyScherzinger]

I think putting it in the 3dot menu on web or the long-press on mobile would be fine since showing it directly would mean we need to process all messages upfront to detect their original language to then decide when to show the translations action (as in show it when the language is not the one of the device). So putting it in the menu would be a good start.

[nickvergessen]

Translate this message" action which only translates it to your language

So far the available translate app app only support a subset of en-de-es-zh-fr (https://github.com/nextcloud-releases/translate/releases/tag/v1.1.3)
For most users that will not cover their languages.

and places it below the original.

That would mean quite a lot of jumping up and down, and when the german translation is bad an english speaking german could not switch to english as a target to see if that is better.

instead of just simply clicking a button.

Well my suggestion would have been to try to detect the origin language and translate to the users language, but we need to handle when that does not exist, e.g. Dutch is not supported, but they might want to read English rather then french or something

[jancborchardt]

@nickvergessen thanks for the explanation – ok then I’m good with a modal. Could be the same dialog as in Text.