Vivaldi 4.2 is out with improved text translation functionality
Vivaldi Technologies released a new version of the company's Chromium-based desktop web browser, Vivaldi, today. Vivaldi 4.2 introduces support for the translation of selections in the web browser among other things.
The new version of Vivaldi is already available. Desktop users may select Vivaldi Menu > Help > Check for updates to run a manual check for updates. Any new update that is found is installed automatically on the device.
Tip: To display the installed version, load vivaldi://about/ in the browser's address bar.
Vivaldi 4.2
Translate functionality was introduced in Vivaldi 4.0, released in June 2021. The initial release supported the translation of entire webpages only.
The feature is powered by Lingvanex and self-hosted by Vivaldi on servers in Iceland. The translation feature does not communicate with third-parties, which is a major benefit for privacy conscious users who don't want data to be transferred to other companies on the Internet.
Vivaldi 4.2 improves the functionality by adding a selection-based translate option to the browser; this is useful to translate part of a page quickly, but also on pages that display content in multiple languages.
Already previewed by us last month, the feature is now available in the latest stable version of the browser.
A right-click on the selection of text in Vivaldi displays the context menu. Select "Translate Selection" to translate the selected text to display the translation overlay.
Vivaldi translates the selection to the default language, but menus are available to change the source and target language manually.
Vivaldi users who prefer using the keyboard can map a keyboard shortcut to the new text selection translation feature. The option to do so is found under Vivaldi Menu > Tools > Settings. Settings can be opened with the shortcut Ctrl-F12 as well.
Switch to Keyboard in the Settings window and expand the Page group of shortcuts. The Translate Selected Text shortcut is not mapped by default, but you can set it to any shortcut you like.
QR Codes
Vivaldi 4.2 introduces a QR code sharing on the desktop to add another feature to the sharing options.
Vivaldi supports several QR code generating options, e.g. by using Ctrl-E to open the browser's Quick Commands interface, typing CR, and selecting the QR code generation action that is displayed.
The QR code can be copied or saved to the downloads folder. Vivaldi users who use the feature particularly often can display a QR code button in the address field to quickly access it. The option to do so is found under Settings > Address Bar.
Other changes
Vivaldi 4.2 introduces two additional features. The first introduces scrollable Web Panels buttons, the second a new search engine called Neeva which promises ad-free search, but is limited to the US right now.
Check out Vivaldi's blog post for additional information and download links.
I tried sticking with Vivaldi for a few months, but the way tabs work made me go back to Brave.
When you open and close tabs in Vivaldi, it doesn’t behave like other Chromium browsers, instead it has its own behavior, there are options to change this behavior, but I never managed to set it up to behave like the other Chromium browsers. This really annoyed me, because sometimes I use middle click to open multiple tabs in the background and when I close one, I expect the one on its right to become the next focused tab, but I could never make it work that way in Vivaldi and it really annoyed and confused me so I gave up using it.
I have been using this browser for a while. It keeps getting better. With this translation functionality, it makes the browser even better. Thank you for the information coverage.
Vivaldi? At first I thought the famous Italian composer had risen from the dead. Nope, just a bloated browser using his name to be relevant. Doesn’t seem to have worked with only 2 million users (lol).
Another search engine? How many do we need. This is becoming like Linux distros and that is not a good thing. The majority of them are copy and paste with a UI change.
As a chrome copy cat why dont they use Google Translate. They are claiming to be ‘private’ but the default search engine is supposedly the opposite of that according to you privacy activists.
This is just a hobbyist browser at the end of the day with a UI change (extremely bad). This ‘company’ is not serious.
Good browser indeed, and getting better with every release. . . I just hope that they’re careful and don’t get to bloated.
Heidi-Ann
to bloated? lmfao , it already is