Dragomand is a per-user Linux daemon that gives desktop applications fully offline machine translation over D-Bus. It runs Mozilla's Bergamot/Marian translation models locally, the ones behind Firefox Translations, and manages which models are installed and which stay loaded in memory.
$ dragomanctl translate -f bg -t en "Добро утро. Как си днес?"
Good morning. How are you today?The first call downloads the model from Mozilla (verified by SHA-256) and starts the daemon through D-Bus activation. Everything afterwards is fully offline, and the daemon exits again when idle.
The Daemon¶
The existing Linux options are either standalone applications or translation tied to a single host such as Firefox. Dragomand is one shared service instead:
- One API for every app. Editors, browsers, clipboard tools,
KRunner, GNOME Shell, LibreOffice and accessibility software all call
the same D-Bus interface: dev.l10n_bg.dragomand.Translator1.
- One copy of every model. The Bergamot engine keeps models in private memory, so every application embedding it would pay for its own copy. A shared daemon loads each model once.
- Current models. Models come from Firefox Remote Settings, exactly what Firefox Translations installs, in every language pair Mozilla publishes.
- Private by design. Text never leaves the machine. The network is used only to download models, and updates are checked only when you ask.
- No idle cost. The daemon is D-Bus activated and exits after an idle period; nothing runs permanently.
Currently implemented¶
Version 0.1.0: the daemon with D-Bus API v1, the dragomanctl
command-line client, install-on-demand model downloads, LRU keep-warm
with memory-pressure eviction, KRunner and GNOME Shell search
integration, a LibreOffice extension and a KTextEditor (Kate) plugin.
Bulgarian and English form the first pair working end to end; every
pair Mozilla publishes is in scope.
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