GoogleTrans API Error – Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

In my case, it’s caused by emoji in strings.
I removed them and everything works well.

Google may be blocking your IP, use a VPN and it should work.

In my case, the error was caused by too many requests in a short time period and my IP address was temporarily blocked. I tried it the next day again and everything worked well.

This is what I had to do to bypass their API call restriction… I use a VPN, specifically Nord-Vpn, so to do it the way I did you would need to be able to connect/disconnect from/to a VPN through the terminal…

    def translate_text(text, dest_language="en"):
        # Used to translate using the googletrans library
        import json
        translator = googletrans.Translator()
        try:
            translation = translator.translate(text=text, dest=dest_language)
        except json.decoder.JSONDecodeError:
            # api call restriction
            process = subprocess.Popen(["nordvpn", "d"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
            process.wait()
            process = subprocess.Popen(["nordvpn", "c", "canada"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
            process.wait()
            return Process_Data.translate_text(text=text, dest_language=dest_language)
        return translation

I have also faced this problem.
In my case, it was due to translating text (in english) to english.

As a workaround I have used another package langdetect to route the non-english text to be translated using google translate.

some snippet from the code:

from langdetect import detect
lang = detect(title)
if lang == 'en':
    temp_dict['title'] = title
else:
    temp_dict['title'] = translator.translate(title, dest='en').text

There could be 2 reasons for this:
1. IP address is temporarily blocked.
2. You have reached the character limit.

I faced the same issue and ended up using another package called translate and it works flawlessly. The syntax is pretty similar too. You can find it here or do pip install translate

I will give a modified answer of Austin Marino, here a solution that just worked for me in a 2000 word list (would work in bigger list too).

first you need to install NordVPN and add it to the system path check this link :

https://support.nordvpn.com/Connectivity/Windows/1350897482/Connect-to-NordVPN-app-on-Windows-using-the-Command-Prompt.htm

The goal is so you can connect/disconnect and chose servers with CMD (you can do the same thing in linux) so you can cantrole theses NordVPN CMD commands through Python code.

Here is the function (please import the libraries) :

   import random

listofservers = ["South Africa", "Egypt" , "Australia", "New Zealand",  "South Korea", "Singapore", "Taiwan", "Vietnam", "Hong Kong", "Indonesia", "Thailand", "Japan", "Malaysia", "United Kingdom", "Netherlands", "Germany", "France", "Belgium", "Switzerland", "Sweden","Spain","Denmark", "Italy", "Norway", "Austria", "Romania", "Czech Republic", "Luxembourg", "Poland", "Finland", "Hungary", "Latvia", "Russia", "Iceland", "Bulgaria", "Croatia", "Moldova", "Portugal", "Albania", "Ireland", "Slovakia","Ukraine", "Cyprus", "Estonia", "Georgia", "Greece", "Serbia", "Slovenia", "Azerbaijan", "Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Macedonia","India", 'Turkey', 'Israel', 'United Arab Emirates', 'United States', 'Canada','Mexico'
,"Brazil", "Costa Rica", "Argentina", "Chile"]

def SelectServer(l):
    return random.choice(l)

def translate_text(text, dest_language="en"):  
    # Used to translate using the googletrans library
    translator = googletrans.Translator()
    try:

        translation = translator.translate(text=text, dest=dest_language)

    except json.decoder.JSONDecodeError:
        # api call restriction

        print("exception !! déconection du VPN ")
        process = subprocess.Popen(["nordvpn", "-d"], shell = True ,stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
        process.wait()

        time.sleep(5)

        srv = SelectServer(listofservers)

        print("sélection du serveur  : "+ srv + " et connexion")

        process = subprocess.Popen(["nordvpn", "-c", "-g", srv ], shell = True ,stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
        process.wait()
        time.sleep(60)

        return translate_text(text=text, dest_language=dest_language)

    return translation.text


    #translate to EN and remove EN stopwords 
    ListCapTranslated = []
    for row  in ListCaptionsCleanFiltred:
        # REINITIALIZE THE API
        newrow = translate_text(row, dest_language="en")
        ListCapTranslated.append(newrow)

ListCapTranslated

Before running the code, please add NordVPN to System path and test connecting/disconnecting on servers through CMD so you make sure everything works.

Cheers.

It’s due to API Limit. The translation limit for each Initialization.
So Reinitialize the Translator after the limit by breaking down the code.

from googletrans import Translator

translator = Translator()

This happens due to the translation limit. You can either use VPNs or Tor to bypass the limitation.
However, you can circumvent this by using the translingual python package.
Also, the language codes can be accessed here, language codes.

from translingual import translate
# example
trans = translate.translate(data=['hello world', 'the world is yours', 'whatever you do, whatever I do', '2b or not 2b'],tolang='es',fromlang='en',thread=3)
print(trans.translate())

The problem lies with the requests that one device can make with the same IP. Changing the VPN resolves the problem. A free and simple alternative to the NordVPN is the TunnelBear.
You can download it from here.

For me, the maximum requests to the googletranslate API are 200. So, every 200 requests I change manually the VPN and then, I continue with the next requests.

Unfortunately, there is some manual work here, since you need every time to change the VPN connection. However, it is helpful in case you want to have fast results and avoid programming the VPN change in Python.