When something goes wrong

Every error in Traxlate is written to name its cause and one fix. This page collects the ones that come up, in the order they tend to appear. If yours is not here, the support page has the address, and the message you saw is the most useful thing to paste.

"No on-device language pack is installed yet"

Nothing is wrong: translation needs the pack, and it is not there yet. Press the install button the message points to. On a computer where someone cleared the browser's site data, the pack went with it and installs again.

The download is slow, or stopped

The progress line shows the measured rate and an estimate; a slow line is slow, not stuck, as long as the bytes keep moving. If they stop for more than a minute:

• On a phone, bring the app to the front. The system pauses background downloads.
• On any device, check the connection and press the button again. The download resumes from where it stopped; nothing already fetched is thrown away.
• If it fails at the same point repeatedly, remove the pack in Settings and install again. Every file is checked against its expected size when it lands, so a damaged partial download is refused rather than kept.

The first translation takes long, then the rest are quick

Expected, and it is the longest single wait in the product. The first run after a fresh start loads the pack into memory, and the status line says so ("Loading the translator — first run only") with a clock.

How long it takes depends mostly on how fast your device can read the whole pack back from its storage, and that varies more than the device does. Measured on one desktop, on the same file, minutes apart: some loads finished in under ten seconds and one took close to a minute, because the operating system sometimes still had the file in its cache and sometimes did not. So a slow first load is not a sign of a slow machine or of anything wrong; the clock on the status line is measured from this load, not guessed. Where your device has a graphics card, Traxlate measures whether using it is actually faster on your machine and only uses it when it is — the words come out the same either way. The phone apps are quick at this: on a Galaxy Z Fold5, reopening the app and translating a sentence took about two seconds. All of these figures are for a pack that is already downloaded. This is separate from installing the pack: that is a one-time download with its own progress line and a size in MB, and it has already finished by the time you see this.

Later runs skip the load while the pack stays in memory, which is why the second translation feels instant next to the first.

"Loading the translator" every single time

The pack is not staying in memory between runs. What that means depends on where you are running it:

• Desktop app: expected after five idle minutes — it releases the pack on purpose so the memory goes back to your machine, and reloads on the next translation. If it happens between two translations a minute apart, that is memory pressure, not the timer.
• Browser and phone apps: there is no timer — nothing releases the pack deliberately. Seeing this repeatedly means the tab was reloaded or the system reclaimed the memory, usually because it is short. Close other tabs or apps.

A translation looks wrong

Read the note under the sentence first. When the guards find a problem they say which — a lost negation, a number that changed, a sentence that switches formality — rather than hiding it. Then:

• Split the input into sentences with punctuation. A long run-on line without full stops is a common cause of a padded or truncated result.
• Check the source language. If it was set to a wrong language, the output is confidently wrong.
• Add the term to your glossary. A glossary term is enforced, not suggested, in every later translation.

If a sentence is still wrong, send us the source sentence and what came out, with the target language, at the address on the support page. Wrong output is a bug we want to see; nothing is collected automatically, so the mail is the only way we learn of it.

Documents come back with layout changes

Paragraph and run formatting are kept; the text inside them changes length, and a longer language pushes lines. The Desk shows both versions side by side so you can shorten a sentence and re-export. A scanned PDF has no text layer; it is recognized first, and the recognition is only as good as the scan.

Pictures: "Reading a picture needs that one-time recognizer download"

Reading text from a picture needs a one-time recognizer language download (under 3 MB per language, fetched through traxlate.com and stored on your device). Pressing Not now leaves the picture unread and shows this note; press Read and translate when you are ready to allow it.

The camera shows nothing

The browser or system denied the camera. The page says so and offers the file picker. Check the site's camera permission in the browser's settings, then reload.

"It says my device is not licensed" / "I paid but it says I am not subscribed"

The subscription covers 2 devices (Unlimited covers 3). Sign in on the device you paid on and open the billing page under your account: it lists the devices the subscription is bound to and the payment record, so a lost receipt mail does not mean a lost payment. A further computer beyond that count needs its own subscription.

Getting help

Write to the address on the support page with the message you saw, the platform (browser or app, and which), and if it is about a translation, the source sentence and what came out. That is what we need to reproduce it.