A new stable version of the Vivaldi web browser is available to download and it comes with a new built-in translation feature.
Vivaldi 4.0’s translation capability is touted as a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Translate and Bing Translator. The text transmogrification tech is tackled using tech from Lingvanex but is hosted by Vivaldi on their servers in Iceland.
It’s a team-up that Vivaldi says helps “keep translations out of the reach of companies like Google or Microsoft.”
Now, I don’t have much of an issue with translation services (Google owned or otherwise) knowing what I translate. But that’s only because 99.5% of the quotes I query are either Swedish song lyrics or Amazon Japan product descriptions 😅.
People who rely on translation tools for inter-personal communication, business needs, and so on, are sure to appreciate the added privacy protections provided here.
The feature, which also works on Vivaldi for Android as well as the desktop browser, has a small set of options should you, say, want the browser to automatically translate a certain language when you encounter it, or only affect a specific website you visit.
Vivaldi Mail Beta Included
Vivaldi 4.0 also offers new betas of Vivaldi Mail, Vivaldi Feed Reader and Vivaldi Calendar. These (fairly potent) features aren’t strictly new (they’ve been available to test prior to now, but only when enabling an experimental flag) but are well worth checking out. The former works with most web-mail services, including Vivaldi’s own.
New users now get to ‘pick’ a Vivaldi layout they think will work best for them — “Essentials”, “Classic”, or “Fully Loaded” — on first run.
Don’t worry; the browser isn’t splitting itself into separate spins. These ‘default’ layouts simply enable or hide parts of the Vivaldi feature set. users remain free to enable/disable features, UI elements, and behaviours with granular precision as and when they like.
Vivaldi is free, but not open source, software available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. You can grab an installer for the latest version direct from the Vivaldi website. There you can also learn more about this release, or the browser in general.
If you already have Vivaldi installed on Ubuntu you can install Vivaldi 4.0 as a software update using the Software Updater tool.