Online Bing translator

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Not sure if this is the correct area to post this. If wrong, sorry.

In my part of the world (Australia), the Bing translator at :
http://www.bing.com/translator/
gives an error message (in hot-pants pink) if I try to translate anything :

We are experiencing some service problems. Refresh page or try again later.

It’s been like that for a couple of days and no sign of any changes.

– Is this a general problem in other countries?
– Anyone have any clue (or can get inside gen about) when/if it will be fixed?

Note: I’m only interested in this particular translator at this particular location. Thanks.

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I just normally right click in the text area and select Translate with Bing, but I’m unable to test your link as I have nothing to translate.

It could be they are having problems, but if you are stuck for a translator and don’t mind copy & paste, then you can use Google Translate.

https://translate.google.co.uk/

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There’s always Bablefish.com

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In my part of the world (Australia), the Bing translator at :
http://www.bing.com/translator/
gives an error message (in hot-pants pink) if I try to translate anything :

We are experiencing some service problems. Refresh page or try again later.

It’s been like that for a couple of days and no sign of any changes.

– Is this a general problem in other countries?

It works fine for me in the U.S.

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As I said, the question is about Bing online translate, exclusively.
I’m aware of other choices.
If anyone needs to test it, just type in “LE” and choose “auto-detect”.
That’s the only test needed. Whether it works or not in other countries/continents.
Thanks.

( I was also hoping a MVP might troll this board and have some info, if you experts have no inside contacts inside Micro$oft. ; )

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Thank you very much, BruceR.

It persists here.
I just tried in Google Chrome and it’s good.
But Firefox 43.0.1 gives the hotpants pink.
And it doesn’t give all the usual options for translation (can’t choose a source/destination language).
The address continues as http://www.bing.com/translator/ so I don’t think it’s malware redirect (and if it is, it’s pointless).

43842-jKQQrfV

So, I’m not sure who produces the error… Firefox or Bing.
The “we” usually suggests Bing ?

Any thoughts on a fix ?
Google search doesn’t bring up any previous instances of that error (afaics).

Thanks for the help.

Edit: Updated to Firefox 45.0 (latest)… no change.

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Some other info :

• tried asking on the Firefox forum but have never done any good there

• cleared FF cache & cookies
• disabled Ad-Block & no Scripts
• restarted FF / restarted Windows 7
• tried it using a VPN (Comodo’s inbuilt one… which sees me located in England, outside London, instead of Sydney Australia where I am)
• Bing translate works fine in Google Chrome so the culprit has to be Firefox (IMO)

Unfortunately, I can’t roll Windows back to an earlier restore point, or I would.
Maybe using Chrome is my best option.
I might also try to reinstall FF from the ground up (but it’s setup perfectly for me now… with settings and add-ons… and it’s rather daunting to think about that).

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Have you tried FF without add-ons as it seems specific to FF ?

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Have you tried FF without add-ons as it seems specific to FF ?

Yes, I did. First I disabled all the Extensions. No change.
Then turned off the Appearance add-ons. No change.
Then updated FF Plugins (no change), then tried with all plugins deactivated (no change).
Tried in FF Safe Mode and then in Windows Safe Mode (with Networks). No change.

A guy at the FF forum said “There is no reason to expect a message in the middle of a web page to come from Firefox.”

So, I dunno who or what produces that message.
Thanks for the suggestion, though.

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Looks like the message is produced by Bing Translator.
I’m not a programmer — completely non-tech — but I took this screenshot from the FF Inspector (note the highlighted bit) :

43852-Bing-Translator-Inspector

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Wonder if it could be a DNS issue.

You could try changing the DNS servers in the computer by going Start – type ncpa.cpl and press enter.

Right click on whichever you are using and select Properties.

Click on (TCP/IPv4) then on Properties.

Click on the lower radio button for Use the following DNS server addresses then enter 8.8.8.8 in the upper row of boxes and 8.8.4.4 in the lower row.

Check the box to Validate settings upon exit – OK – Close and that will start the trouble shooter which should return couldn’t find any problems, or words to that effect.

You could also try OpenDNS 208.67.222.222 / 208.67.220.220 or Level 3’s 4.2.2.1 / 4.2.2.2 but the first ones of Google’s I’ve suggested should be good enough to try with.

To restore the auto DNS settings, just click on the radio button above that one.

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Hi, Sudo15

I tried it and, no, no difference.

Here’s a screenshot of the DNS used after each Bing Translate attempt (just to prove I did it right, lol) :

43856-DNS-x-2-used

As well as trying Firefox Safe Mode and Windows Safe Mode (with networks) separately as given in an earlier post, I also did Firefox Safe Mode running within Windows Safe Mode (with networks)… still get the error.

Thanks for the help.

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Nearly right – Google’s secondary DNS is 8.8.4.4 and not 8.8.8.4 but it would have connected with the primary.

It was only an outside thought anyway as you can still access the site.

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Woot !!!!

Success ! Thank you cor-el from Firefox forum who suggested testing the site using a new FF profile.
From that small beginning… I now have my original FF configuration working again after minor tweaking of it.

How it got fixed (in case it’s helpful for anyone else) :
0. tested the old profile [OP] one last time. Still bad.
1. I created a new, raw profile [NP] as per your instructions and backed up both old [OPBK] and new [NPBK] profiles.
2. I started manually copying folders/files from the [OP] to the [NP] and testing that, to see if it was going rogue.
• all the folders first –> [OP] -> [NP] -> no problems
• the files, progressively
• when I got to cookies.sqlite, got the familiar hotpants pink error ; restored [NP] from [NPBK] and continued.
• all ok until I reached permissions.sqlite –> pinko error again.

• so, instead of continuing, I thought to try and correct the [OP] (because fixing that seemed easiest & quickest) for the 2 fatals : cookies.sqlite & permissions.sqlite.

• I did an about:permissions in the address bar of FF running the [OP] (not [NP] )
• Scrolled down to http://www.bing.com/ in the list
• Cookies : changed blocked –> allow
• open popup windows : changed blocked –> allow
• Exited FF and run FF again using changed [OP]
… and the translator worked… no communist error messages.

Note : I’m now using the [OP] again ( and not the [NP] with files copied across from the [op]. )

I guess it will take a few days of testing to ensure that the fix endures.

I do not know how those permissions got changed.
I don’t know enough to have done it myself.
Best guess is that NoScript or something similar decided to blacklist Bing for some reason. Maybe Bing did something odd one time I used it and the app reacted to it. Anyway, it’s good now and I know how to solve this kind of error in future.

Note : marking Bing untrustedin the NoScript extension doesn’t actually cause the pink error. But It does prevent the translation in other ways so perhaps NoScript had its finger in the pie somewhere.

Note : The various experts on WindowsSecrets, in this thread, help me a lot in other ways. For a non-techie, I was given some great advice in testing problems like this that will be very helping in other areas too. Thank you so much, guys !

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