Add a dedicated translation page to Kagi.com and use LLMs to translate

mullinggroove

Vlad I just tried Haiku and it is not able to follow my full preprompt. Would not choose that model for this task. Maybe for simple straight up one word translations. The preprompt would have to be rewritten though.

smartbeach

Having a "Translate Page" dropdown like shown above makes sense, but a general translation service seems, to me, a bit out of scope for search.

I would probably use it if Kagi had it, but I have no issues using Google Translate or e.g. ChatGPT to translate text and I'm not sure how a general translation service fits into a search service. I'm not saying that's the only thing Kagi can or should be, but I personally would rather see focus on search with as little side-tracking as possible. If it's a quick and cheap thing to implement I don't see any issues though!

mullinggroove

Some here view Kagi as just a traditional web search engine, but you could say its business and core competency is finding answers. Beyond mere website searches, Kagi seeks to help users find good answers to their questions using technologies and methods that align with its values. I think that assisting with translation tasks is a natural fit for Kagi. Language models (LLMs) definitely play a useful role in this context, but the extent to which they should be used or deployed remains unclear to me.

mackid1993

Much like Google Translate has Kagi considered leveraging AI tools to create a more private Kagi Translate for translating web pages between different languages. Perhaps this can be part of the browser extension on desktop? It may be a nice feature to have in the future to have less reliance on Google services.

If I access a website in my non native language the Kagi Browser extension could translate it for me. Perhaps there can also be a section on Kagi.com to input a URL to translate as well as a section to translate words and sentences between languages much like Google Translate while still being privacy respecting.

Dustin

+1 I would love to see a simple translate.kagi.com that one can visit. As it is now, there's no real simple, clean way to translate ala. translate.google.com

Kagi4all

great idea.

dai

@Vlad Thanks for publishing this https://translate.kagi.com/

I think that is the best solution for localazy to integrate AI in the translation function.

https://localazy.com/p/kagi-search

The string that has been translated by about 5-6 providers in a contrasting pane configuration of source and target is displayed below.
In extreme cases, I can proceed with the translation using only the mouse.

Vlad

dai How did you find it? It is not supposed to have launched yet 🙂

dai

Vlad

Oh! Is it still private?

Sorry. I saw it above and just typed it in and found it.

JJ

what is the model being used at present by kagi for translate both in search and on the spec page? esp considering fast, better, best?

Vlad

JJ We are still experimenting. How do you like it?

smartbeach

Vlad I really like that it can translate text with multiple languages in them. Google translate doesn't do that, which is a bit annoying.

vs (I have no idea what kind of drugs Google Translate is on. Kagi translates it correctly)

Other observations:

Google Translate is nicer with longer texts. The textarea used on Kagi is quite small which means you can't see all text at the same time. To see all three paragraphs/sentences in my screenshot above I had to resize the textarea.
The "real time" translation by Google Translate is nice. I often have a situation where I have a sentence and want to remove one or a few words. In most languages it's very straight forward but in e.g. Japanese it's harder. The real time updates makes it easier to iterate.
I like the side-by-side view on Google Translate on desktops/big screens, but I don't think it's a big deal for me. But for slightly longer texts I think it's nicer.
Maybe adding a box around the output would make it clearer that it's outputted text. Though that might just be a habit.
The language dropdown could use a search/filter, there are a lot of languages to pick from so the list is quite long.
If one inputs multiple languages but chose to only translate one of them, the output is inconsistent depending on which mode is used. Fast translates all languages anyway, while Standard and Best only translates (and outputs) the chosen language:

carl

So far, I think Kagi Translate is excellent. A useful feature would be for it to remember a few languages I have used and suggest them at the top of the list. The same way that Kagi Search will put your last used search regions at the top of the list to select.

I also prefer the side-by-side presentation of original text and translated text that DeepL uses, instead of one above the other. (For wide enough viewports)

Vlad

smartbeach Thanks for great feedback. We had an update recently to improve to functionality please check and let us know!

carl

smartbeach The language dropdown could use a search/filter, there are a lot of languages to pick from so the list is quite long.

Using the DATALIST instead of SELECT element would be a perfect solution for this. It's extremely easy to implement.

Vlad

carl We already support search with latest update just type to jump to lang

carl

Vlad
Another thing about SELCET vs DATALIST is that you cannot search a SELECT dropdown on mobile by typing, at least not on iOS.

Nashwan In the experimental translate interface, you might consider adding a way to select part (or all) of a translation and trigger a search query with it?

At least on MacOS and iOS, this is built into the system when you right click any selected text or word anywhere, also in Kagi Translate.

carl

In these cases DATALIST is more user-friendly than SELECT, because many users don't know that they can type in a dropdown to jump to an item.

Also with DATALIST, you could present languages in multiple languages and have filtering work. For example "German (Deutsch)".

Nashwan

Just jumping on this with some thoughts. I have been using Assistant prompts to ask it to translate a search query into a specific language (mostly Japanese) and search the Japanese web for relevant results with ResearchAgent. There are probably quite a few use cases for this, but mine is fetching authentic recipes from a country, which works very well. In the experimental translate interface, you might consider adding a way to select part (or all) of a translation and trigger a search query with it? It opens up so much more of the internet if you can search with native language terms, rather than only using English.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops!

Nashwan

carl
Well look at that, it works in Firefox on Windows too, I had no idea! Thanks 😊

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