Proposal: Simple Translation API #215
Description
It would be useful to give websites a way to programmatically trigger the browser built-in translation prompt.
For example:
document.querySelector("#custom-translate-button").addEventListener("click", () => {
window.showTranslationPrompt();
});
Then the user would see the browser popup that asks what language they want to translate to.
This translation feature is already available in most browsers, but it is usually difficult for non technical users to find the translate button in the browser menu.
Offering websites a way to trigger that translation popup programmatically, when a button is clicked for example, would drastically improve the user experience.
Example use case: We want to provide a simple user experience for translating restaurants menus to any language on BuonMenu, when a user sitting at the restaurant is reading a menu. Basically the restaurant owner can write the menu in their language, and then any user can translate the menu to their favorite language by using the browser feature. The browser built-in translation is not very intuitive for users, sometimes they don't see it and they don't know that their browser can translate the page. Also note that translating each menu to 100+ languages seems impractical and it would also hurt SEO, since automatic translation without manual review is not considered a good practice. This means that browser translation would be the best option, however there should be a simple way for non-technical users to find that feature.