[Officially acknowledged + fix coming] Ability to Google Translate images using camera broken on Android

I remember during one of my excursions to Barcelona, when me and my friends were casually roaming around the streets of the beautiful city and decided to stop by a street side cafeteria for a quick supper.

The moment I had the menu in my hand, I was like, yeah I would love to order if only one could tell me what exactly the items on the menu read. Linguistic barriers can be a pain while travelling I tell you. But thankfully, I had my rescuer right in my pocket.

I just took out my phone, took a picture of the menu using Google translate, highlighted the text in the image and bang. I knew what I had to order. I must say, Translate images has been such a convenient feature during most of my travel overseas.

But, as is usually the case, Google Translate is a piece of software, and like other software, this one also has issues of its own. In today’s story we are going to talk about one such problem that’s being reported since February and hasn’t received a fix at least until now.

Problem in question

Going by user reports that have been pouring across the official Google Translate Help forum, Google Translate’s image translation on the Android app is not working and throws an error when users try to translate an image.

A notification stating “Service inaccessible. Please try again later. (E-810)” pops up instead of the translated output, as can be seen in the following user shared image:

Take a look at how some of the complainants word the problem behavior across the official help forum:

Recently the image translation feature has stopped working on my android phone. All I get when I try to take a picture of text to translate it is a message that says, “Service inaccessible. Please try again later. (E-810)”. I have tried again later and it has the same result. It is the same if I am on wifi or on a data connection. I even reinstalled the app but it didn’t fix it. It appears that the instant translation option is still working though.

when I take or add a photo of text translate, I got error issue “Service inaccessible. Please try again later. (E-810)” no matter on wifi or 4G connection. I even reinstalled the app. I’m using Xiaomi Mi 8.

While most of the complainants mentioned they encounter E-810 service inaccessible error, some have mentioned they get to see an E-807 error instead. Though the problem behavior is exactly same.

I have the same problem (except mine is labelled E-807). I can temporarily fix it by going to settings_apps_Translate “force stop” then storage_clear data. However, the problem quickly comes back.

In addition to camera images, users have confirmed even for translating the pictures stored in Gallery, same error poops up. Here are a couple of reports:

Unable to translate by image which is saved in gallery.. when trying to translate it reflecting error like “service not accessible error E-810”.

The translation service for images( for both camera images and gallery images) is not working any more.

Development on the matter

Since day one, a lot of confusion has been surrounding the problem in question, with a Google Translate Help forums product expert saying multiple things. To begin with, as soon as users started reporting the issue, the product expert said it’s an issue specific to Samsung devices.

This error is a Samsung device issue with reading files. I would suggest posting on the Android help forum.

And reports could be seen posted even across the official Samsung Community. But users right away denied the expert’s claim and confirmed that they were also facing the issue on devices other than Samsung like Huawei, Sony Xperia, Xiaomi, Vivo and HTC to name a few.

Later, on a different thread at the forums addressing the same problem, the same forums product expert said the problem has to do with Android phones and not with the app.

Well… This seems to be an Android issue with several devices. The issue is reported on Android (devices) of some manufacturers. (As you know Android is modified by the manufacturers). This brings to the conclusion that this is not an App issue. I have not been able to replicate the issue on my Android devices nor my colleagues.

Then a couple of weeks back, while reverting back to one of the complainants, the expert said:

Search the community and the internet for this error. This is known error with the device.

With all that coming form a forums expert, it appeared the issue has something to do with Android phones instead of Google Translate app, which confused users all the more.

But now, a Google employee has confirmed that they’ve seen a lot of user reports and the problem is being investigated.

Thanks for reporting this issue! We’ve had several reports of this E-810 error and are actively investigating the cause and potential solutions.

Here’s there complete statement:

Hope that will give a breath of relief to those who’ve been facing the issue for more than two months now. Just like Google has confirmed the issue, hope they fix the same soon so that users can have a glitch free experience.

Rest assured, we are keeping a tab and will update the story as and when any new development comes to our sight.

Any workaround?

Meanwhile, the only workaround that appears to help those affected is to enable all permissions for Google Play Services in Settings. Here’s what a user said about it:

If you don’t wish to wait until Google fixes whatever is causing the issue, you can give the workaround a try and see if that resolves the problem for you. And yes, don’t forget to let us know how it goes. ?

Someone from Google Translate team has officially acknowledged the issue saying a fix will be rolling out soon.

Turning on all the permission is what we believe to be the correct workaround. There is an issue in Google Play Services related to our camera feature that requires all permissions to be on in Google Play Services. This is incorrect (it only requires Network access — necessary to talk to the image recognition service) and a fix is coming.

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