Machine Translation
Machine translation is delivered by QuickTrans – an always-on-top popup (and dockable panel) with translations from every enabled provider. See QuickTrans for the full reference.
Opening QuickTrans
| How | Notes |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+Alt+Q (⌘⌥Q on macOS) | Opens the QuickTrans always-on-top popup and starts the MT fan-out immediately on the selected text. Auto-copies the current selection so you don’t need a separate Ctrl+C first. |
| Editor right-click → ⚡ QuickTrans | Right-click menu in the editor. |
| 🔍 Run in SuperLookup button in the popup header | After you’ve seen the QuickTrans results, click 🔍 to hand the same query off to Workbench’s SuperLookup tab for a richer concordance / termbase / web look-up. |
Providers
QuickTrans supports these MT providers (subject to your API keys and per-provider on/off flags):
- DeepL
- Google Translate
- Microsoft Translator
- Amazon Translate
- ModernMT
- MyMemory (free)
Plus optional LLM-based “translation as suggestion” from Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek, and a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint or local Ollama model.
Configure providers
QuickTrans’s provider list and LLM model selectors live in Workbench Settings → ⚡ QuickTrans. Click the ⚙ cog icon in the QuickTrans popup header to jump there in one click.
Per-provider on/off + LLM model choices persist in general_settings.json under mt_quick_lookup.
Language behaviour
- QuickTrans uses the active project’s language pair by default.
- The popup has its own From / To dropdowns – override per-query without affecting your project settings.
Performance
Provider calls run in parallel (each with a 5 s timeout, overall batch capped at 6 s) so total wall-clock is roughly the slowest single provider, not the sum. Results appear in the popup as they arrive – the first to finish is auto-selected so you can hit Enter without waiting for the slow providers.
Copying results
- Successful results show a 📋 copy button.
- You can also double-click a result row to copy the translation.
- Number keys 1–9 select the corresponding result (1 = first, 2 = second, etc.).