Google Toolbar: Translator won’t turn off
February 26th, 2010I use the Google tool bar. The other day I was on a WordPress plug-in site and it was in some Viking language and I needed it translated. So I enabled the Translate tool thinking I could click on the translate button and have the entire page translated. Nope, that’s not how it works. You have to hover your mouse over the word you want translated and a little Javascript window appears with translations. Lame.
Anyhoo, it wasn’t the solution I was looking for so I turned the button off, but the fucker kept translating. Extremely annoying. However, I figured out how to turn it off. Thought you might like to know if you’re having the same issue.
- Go back into the toolbar options by right-clicking on a blank spot on the toolbar or by clicking the little wrench icon.
- Click on Tools in the menu on the left and locate the Translate thingy. See that disabled Edit link? That’s the source of the problem.
- Check the checkbox to the left of Translate to get the Edit link to activate. Click on the now active Edit link.
- See the problem? Those checkboxes are still clicked and active. Apparently, unchecking the Translate checkbox only hides the button from the toolbar, but any checked options are still active.
- So uncheck all three of those boxes and save. That should disable it. Bob’s you uncle.
Uh Oh! They sure made it very difficult to turn off translation. Thanks for sharing this, you might want to use some kind of greasemonkey script to fool google toolbar into thinking you have done a ‘mouseover’.
Wow, I cleared cookies and logged off to turn it off, but it came back once I logged in. I had to remove the toolbar, I might try installing it again after reading your tips.
Thanks. After turning it ‘off’ six times only to have it turn back on I found your post. It sure would be nice if Google let you add meta data on a page to set what the language is rather than having some dumb a– algo try to figure it out (and get it wrong). Rrrr…
Good tips. There are always some changes in this bar of translations, and sometimes it is difficult to use. Anyway, it’s a free way to read content in other languages
Hi Folks,
i`m also one of the really PISSED-OFF users, allways getting anoyed by the translation Pop-Up Thing. I hate toolbars and i am definitely not going to install the google toolbar just to disable this particular feature(?).
My solution is pretty simple, just add the following to your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 translate.googleapis.com
(you can find the hosts file here: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts)
If you are using vista or Windows 7 you need to open Notepad with “Administrative-Rights” then open the file, add the line and save the file.
!! Make sure you save the file without any extention eg. .txt or something!!
Thats it now close your browser, do a ipconfig /flushdns from the commandline or just reboot your computer and thats it Translate is gone.
Cheers Ingo