Failed to search TKK

Any translation attempt is failing with the error:
google-translate--search-tkk: Failed to search TKK

which version do you use? M-x google-translate-version RET.

I'm also having this problem. Using most recent version 0.11.11

I'm also on 0.11.11

Facing the same issue on 0.11.11. Any help is highly appreciated,
BTW, I am behind a http proxy.

Hi all!

I have no idea what exactly could be the root cause of the issue. But with your help I believe the reason could be discovered and the issue fixed.

I've just pushed the code (0.11.12 version) which should help us to debug the issues which relate to retrieving of TKK.

With these changes, please, execute M-: (setq google-translate--tkk-debug t) RET (or M-x eval-expression RET (setq google-translate--tkk-debug t) RET). Then try to translate a word/sentence as usually you do. As the result, two buffers should appear. First one usual one (*Google Translate*) with the translation, and the second one (*Google Translate Debug*) with the debug info, i.e. HTML which is used for retrieving of TKK. Then please paste the contents of *Google Translate Debug* buffer here.

If you'll see that someone already posted the similar output as you get, please feel free to post it again, or just notify that you get the same output. I just believe that additional information would be helpful.

Actually any help is highly appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

Thank you for the efforts and further steps. I will report the test results soon.

After upgrading to 0.11.12 and setting the debug to true as you suggested I did a google-translate-smooth-translate.

I don't see two windows open and I receive the same error. This is what happens

Translate : "The text to be translated appears here correctly (Japanese)" RET
Translate from : Japanese RET
Translate to : English RET
connecting to proxy.xxx.xxx.xx
Failed to Search TKK

But version 0.11.10 works perfectly at my home computer (11.11 and 11.12 not tested yet). The above test was from my office computer and the only difference is that, the office computer is behind a http proxy. So I strongly doubt it has something to do with proxy.

Further testing for connection through proxy

'wget' from terminal connects successfully to http and https
2.'eww' from emacs connects to http but fails to establish a connection to https
'package-list-packages' from emacs downloads successfully from http sources (melpa and org) but fails to download from https source (marmalade)

Since google translate has to establish a connection to https://translate.google.com, i strongly suspect it has something to do with my proxy setting. Sorry if I wasted your time.

But I would sincerely appreciate if you can point out some ways I can make it to work in my work-computer behind proxy. I also hope many people need google translate in their office computer which is normally behind a proxy.

Thank you for your time and efforts

Interesting. My case is opposite. While it works on my office computer, doesn't work on my home computer. Both uses same emacs settings including google-translate's versions(0.11.13).

EDITED:

works on my ~~home~~ office computer
doesn't work on my ~~office~~ home computer

SOLVED
The issue was Emacs-25.0 was using the "GET method" to connect to HTTPS sites, which my company's firewall (proxy) didn't like. The solution is to make Emacs use the "CONNECT method" to request connection to HTTPS sites (which the proxy allows). The following page correctly directed me towards the solution.

http://emacs.1067599.n8.nabble.com/bug-11788-url-http-does-not-properly-handle-https-over-proxy-td46070.html

Either modify that one particular .el file and rebuild you emacs OR update to 'emacs-snapshot' version-26. I took the easier step and updated to Emacs-26.0.50.2. Now google-translate works like a charm within emacs.
Thank you all for the pointers and support

@jack836 Good news. Thank you for sharing.
BTW, I've edited my comment since it was wrong. My home network doesn't use a proxy AFAIK, but it seems worthwhile to try that. Again, thanks!

When I updated Emacs 25.1 to Emacs 25.2, I found the issue.

The issue is solved on my PC when google-translate package turns to request through HTTPS but not HTTP by setting google-translate-base-url and google-translate--tkk-url as follows

  (when (and (= emacs-major-version 25) (<= emacs-minor-version 2))
    (setq google-translate-base-url
          "https://translate.google.com/translate_a/single"
          google-translate--tkk-url
          "https://translate.google.com/"))

I am uncertain about the issue at Emacs 25.1
@jack836 mentions above that the problem is solved at Emacs 26
#52 (comment)

Wish it will be helpful.

Info:

Emacs version "25.2.1" which is built with GnuTLS library
(google-translate-version) says "Google Translate (version): 0.11.14"
google-translate package is installed via MELPA version 20170713.119; not MELPA stable

I met the same problem. After configuring a socks5 proxy for emacs, the problem got addressed. Maybe it's concerning to the ISP, who blocks the network traffic to google services. However, I found something weired. With network proxy set globally in gnome 3, the google services can be visited by firefox browser, but they are not available in eww web browser in emacs. The socks5 proxy settings in gnome 3 seems to be ignored.

example socks5 proxy for emacs:

(setq url-gateway-method 'socks)
(setq socks-server '("Default server" "127.0.0.1" 1080 5))

This just started happening to me after months without a problem. But, it went away after a few minutes. I am not using a proxy.

UPDATE: Now using a different computer that also worked without a problem. It's now failing with the same message.
💻🔨

Same problem here. It has been working for months without a problem, but now i get google-translate--search-tkk: Failed to search TKK all the time. I tried to set google-translate--tkk-debug to true, but no second buffer with debug info appears.

Same problem here. It has been working for months without a problem, but now i get google-translate--search-tkk: Failed to search TKK all the time. I tried to set google-translate--tkk-debug to true, but no second buffer with debug info appears.

same issue here /'' (;;Emacs version 25.3; google-translate version 0.11.14)

same here

GNU Emacs 26.1
Google Translate (version): 0.11.14

The problem seems to be that the google-translate--tkk-regex definition in google-translate-tk.el,

google-translate/google-translate-tk.el

Line 50 in d8b84a8

    
           "TKK=eval('((function(){var\\s-+a\\\\x3d\\(-?[0-9]+\\);var\\s-+b\\\\x3d\\(-?[0-9]+\\);return\\s-+\\([0-9]+\\)"

does not match the appropriate string in the retrieved HTML document, which in my case was

TKK='427110.1469889687'.

I'm also running Emacs 26.1 and version 0.11.14.

same here, I'm investigating and looking for a solution

does not match the appropriate string in the retrieved HTML document

yes, previously HTML had something like the following:

TKK=eval('((function(){var a\x3d3470396290;var b\x3d183821724;return 426874+\x27.\x27+(a+b)})())');

now we have this representation: TKK='427116.3269864724';.

@atykhonov @rantonse

I found a quick fix. Try it:

(when (and (string-match "0.11.14"
                         (google-translate-version))
           (>= (time-to-seconds)
               (time-to-seconds
                (encode-time 0 0 0 23 9 2018))))
  (defun google-translate--get-b-d1 ()
    ;; TKK='427110.1469889687'
    (list 427110 1469889687)))

You can use TKK='427110.1469889687', TKK='427116.3269864724' or other value.

Same problem here. It has been working for months without a problem, but now i get google-translate--search-tkk: Failed to search TKK all the time. I tried to set google-translate--tkk-debug to true, but no second buffer with debug info appears.

Emacs 25.1.1;
Google Translate (version): 0.11.14

A stubborn error in the Messages buffer:

 google-translate--search-tkk: Failed to search TKK

even if I change:

    (setq google-translate-base-url                                                                                            
          "https://translate.google.com/translate_a/single"                                                                    
          google-translate--tkk-url                                                                                            
          "https://translate.google.com/")

Same here.

I had the same problems two days ago.
My emacs version is 26.1

@SunDawning
your fix work for me.
Thanks you

(use-package google-translate
:ensure t
:config
(when (and (string-match "0.11.14"
(google-translate-version))
             (>= (time-to-seconds)
		 (time-to-seconds
                  (encode-time 0 0 0 23 9 2018))))
    (defun google-translate--get-b-d1 ()
      ;; TKK='427110.1469889687'
      (list 427110 1469889687))))

@edurante Thanks for your workaround!

I also use use-package, and the below patch works for me. 😃

-:config
+:init

I'm very sorry! The above patch in #52 (comment) is my misunderstanding. 🙇
(:config is correct, NOT :init)

Also, I need this workaround using bind-keys* instead of :bind:

(use-package google-translate
  :config
  ;; ...
  ;; Workaround in https://github.com/atykhonov/google-translate/issues/52#issuecomment-424302439
  ;; ...

  ;; BEGIN: Workaround which I need
  (bind-keys*
    ("C-c t" . google-translate-at-point)
    ("C-c T" . google-translate-at-point-reverse))
  ;; :bind (("C-c t" . google-translate-at-point)
  ;;        ("C-c T" . google-translate-at-point-reverse))
  ;; END
  )

@SunDawning it works very well! Thanks a lot! I'm preparing a patch based on the workaround.

The v0.11.15 have been released with the fix. Please update. It works well. In a case of any issue please report here (the issue is not going to be closed while we have tkk).

All credit to @SunDawning.

Thank you all!

The latest version works fine (no TKK error any more). I needed to restart emacs after re-installing google-translate.

Looks like the error is up again Search failed: ";TKK='", could someone, please, confirm? All worked just about a week ago.

Version: 0.11.15.

I am glad to say that everything got back to normal a couple of days ago. Only makes me wonder what could've have been the issue for more than a week, considering I didn't change anything systemwise on my computer.

@Grigorievich it happens sometimes (quite rare) to me. I just translate again and get successful translation immediately after the issue.

@atykhonov I see what you mean. I did give it multiple consequtive tries on different days. Well, I sure am glad to see it working again!

@Grigorievich me too. Thanks for the report nevertheless, this might be not so harmless as it looks like, so I'm keeping watch over it.

I got same error.

diff --git a/google-translate-tk.el b/google-translate-tk.el
index 4af9b87..2bac471 100644
--- a/google-translate-tk.el
+++ b/google-translate-tk.el
@@ -137,6 +137,8 @@ D is an integer."
   (let* ((url-request-extra-headers '(("Connection" . "close")))
          (buf (url-retrieve-synchronously google-translate--tkk-url)))
     (with-current-buffer buf
+      (message "%S" (buffer-substring-no-properties (point-min)
+                                                    (point-max)))
       (google-translate--search-tkk))))
 
 (defun google-translate--gen-rl (a b)

with above debug code, I got following output. (extract tkk related)

var mobileWebapp={display_language: // snip...
campaign_tracker_id:'1h',tkk:'428741.3398103640',  // snip...
false,enable_auto_update_result:false};var messages // snip...
TKK = mobileWebapp.tkk;

fix google-translate--search-tkk like below, then the error seems fixed.

diff --git a/google-translate-tk.el b/google-translate-tk.el
index 4af9b87..e7a7c2f 100644
--- a/google-translate-tk.el
+++ b/google-translate-tk.el
@@ -124,8 +124,8 @@ D is an integer."
   (let ((start nil)
         (tkk nil)
         (nums '()))
-    (setq start (search-forward ";TKK='"))
-    (search-forward "';")
+    (setq start (search-forward ",tkk:'"))
+    (search-forward "',")
     (backward-char 2)
     (setq tkk (buffer-substring start (point)))
     (setq nums (split-string tkk "\\."))

@yuya373 Your patch works fine. Thanks a lot! 😆

Yes! @yuya373 patch works great! Emacs 25.1, newest version of google-translate from melpa.

It looks like that an issue that happens quite rare, turned into a permanent issue. It is fixed in 0.11.16 version. google-translate doesn't work for me without the mentioned patch. @yuya373 thanks a lot!

I am having this issue, using version 0.11.17 and emacs 26.1.

Looks like the error is up again, 😞
The output I got reads: Search failed: ",tkk:'"
I'm using google-translate, version 0.11.17 and emacs 26.1

(url-retrieve-synchronously google-translate--tkk-url)
this one sometimes returns an empty string, so searching TKK will fail
@touxstone, as a temporary solution you can try to replace 'google-translate--search-tkk' by:

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))

But I guess there should be some kind of cache... @atykhonov what do you think?

Hi, @a7f4 thanks though (replaced as suggested and restarted Emacs) it doesn't work for me (same output).

@touxstone
I guess you have at least one more version of this package.

try this one:

find ~/.emacs.d -name "google-translate-tk.el"

I suppose that you'll get more than one )

I guess you have at least one more version of this package.

try this one:

find ~/.emacs.d -name "google-translate-tk.el"

I suppose that you'll get more than one )

so, the output I got is:

.emacs.d/elpa/google-translate-20190206.1229/google-translate-tk.el

@touxstone
It's quite strange if you've replaced the original google-translate--search-tkk
you should not be able to get the same output: Search failed: ",tkk:'"
maybe you have emacs --daemon running on your machine?

anyway, make sure that:

google-translate-tk.el contains only one definition of google-translate--search-tkk
and this definition exactly :
(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
and you have only one fresh running instance of emacs

I am also puzzled. I've tried all the checkings I've been able to. replaced the above-given function, Mx-kill-emacs, restated the PC (even) included and same output...

emacs 26.1 on debian buster.

google-translate--search-tkk: Search failed: ",tkk:'"

google-translate-buffer is an interactive autoloaded compiled Lisp function in
‘.emacs.d/elpa/google-translate-20190206.1229/google-translate-default-ui.el’.

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
works for me and stops the error

google-translate--search-tkk: Search failed: ",tkk:'"

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
This works, but for only one translation. If I translate something, then close the window with the translation, and then try to translate again, I get the same error:

"Search failed: ",tkk"
I need to restart emacs to be able to translate again.

So I temporarily solved it with translate-shell.
It's working like this: I open "shell-command" and type "e word-to-translate", and have a result.
For this to work:

I added aliases to translate from/to interested langs:

alias р='trans -b ru:en'
alias e='trans en:ru -brief'
alias eng='trans en:ru'

And I added (setq shell-command-switch "-ic") to my .spacemacs dotspacemacs/user-config to support loading .bashrc for "shell-command".

@Liverm0r :

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
This works, but for only one translation. If I translate something, then close the window with the translation, and then try to translate again, I get the same error:

"Search failed: ",tkk"
I need to restart emacs to be able to translate again.

It causes because you didn't override the original function,
but defined a function with the same name so, at first execution, it works
but then original function overrides your definition.

try to find google-translate-tk.el and replace google-translate--search-tkk within it
But pls note! this is also a temporary solution

you can find my trying for resolve this issue here: #85

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
This works, but for only one translation. If I translate something, then close the window with the translation, and then try to translate again, I get the same error:

"Search failed: ",tkk"
I need to restart emacs to be able to translate again.

So I temporarily solved it with translate-shell.
It's working like this: I open "shell-command" and type "e word-to-translate", and have a result.
For this to work:
1. I added aliases to translate from/to interested langs:
alias р='trans -b ru:en'
alias e='trans en:ru -brief'
alias eng='trans en:ru'
1. And I added  `(setq shell-command-switch "-ic")` to my .spacemacs `dotspacemacs/user-config` to support loading .bashrc for "shell-command".

Well, as any of the posted patches work for me /..\ I tried the suggested translate-shell, I didn't know about it, thanks @Liverm0r. Plus, using shell-command-to-string I could manage to make a short helper function so translating on the fly into the languages I more often use (though I did it so making it easy to extend it to any language by providing the lang code the language-for you are in need of as the x argument to my function translate-to-any. Following, if so, the examples I actually use translate-to-eng | translate-to-spa) So (again) thank you very much. I hope it helps.

This workaround
(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
works for me and prevents the error Search failed: ",tkk:'".
But is it ok that the last version (0.11.17) does not work out of the box?

This workaround
(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
works for me and prevents the error Search failed: ",tkk:'".

This fixes it for me too. Thanks.

GNU Emacs 26.2 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.8) of 2019-04-12
Google Translate (version): 0.11.17

@SunDawning thx for your fix. I just had this issue in my google translate version. With a slightly modification it also worked for me with ob-translate and google-translate packages:

(use-package google-translate
:ensure t
:config
  (bind-keys*
  ("C-c t" . google-translate-at-point)
  ("C-c T" . google-translate-at-point-reverse)))

(when (and (string-match "0.11.17"
(google-translate-version))
	 (>= (time-to-seconds)
	     (time-to-seconds
	      (encode-time 0 0 0 23 9 2018))))
(defun google-translate--get-b-d1 ()
  (list 427110 1469889687)))

The TKK string seems to change every now and then. I had to adjust it again to
427110 1469889687. It changed within two days..

@y-ates Probably there is a Google insider here :(
how do you get the right TKK number and where do we change it?

@OrionRandD

I wrote a script:

#!/bin/sh

tkk_string=`curl --silent -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:59.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/59.0" -L http://translate.google.com/ | sed 's/, */\n /g' | grep "tkk" | head -1`

first_number=`echo ${tkk_string} | cut -d"'" -f2 | cut -d"." -f1`
second_number=`echo ${tkk_string} | cut -d"'" -f2 | cut -d"." -f2`

echo '(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list '"${first_number}"' '"${second_number}"'))'

Just run this script and copy paste its output into your config
or go ahead and even automate the copy paste step.

@y-ates thx for the script. Very useful.

Seems we're at the point where @y-ates's code should be added to this library as part of a retry function that gets called on error.

But is it ok that the last version (0.11.17) does not work out of the box?

@dvzubarev it works out of the box for me (without any issue).

I supposed this is kind of an issue that we experienced before when for part of the users google-translate works well but for part of them it doesn't work well. So the issues are reported here when something doesn't work. And I can wait until it will not work for me as well (as it happened before) and then I can fix it. But it still works for me. I'll try to figure out what can be the root cause of the issue.

In the meantime, I've just merged #91 that provides several backends (emacs as the default, curl and wget). You can try to configure google-translate (v0.11.18) with curl (or wget) as a last resort in order to cope with the issues reported here (see README.md for more details). Please let me know how it does work for you. Kudos to @t-suwa !

Hola a todos, hablare en español porque mi ingles es increíblemente pésimo y tal ves se me entienda menos de ese modo.

tuve exactamente el mismo problema de ustedes pero con el Textractor, y llame a la compañía de internet para intentar cambiar mi ip, ya que no se cambiaba de manera tradicional a pesar de supuestamente ser una ip dinámica, y al ayudarme la chica del call center me dijo que había un bloqueo en mi router, que me lo quito, pero que evite usar ese tipo de programas porque ellos no ofrecen ese tipo de servicio, no entendi muy bien a lo que se refería, ya que se muy poco de programación, pero aun asi me quedo claro que el problema era un bloqueo en el router.

no se si esto es lo que genera todo, o solo es mi caso particular en todo casi si a alguien le sucede este problema especialmente con el uso de textractor, y tiene servicio con claro, llamen a servicio al cliente, puede ser el mismo bloqueo que yo tenia.

I tried with 0.11.18, but it works neither with curl nor the emacs backend:

Fri Aug  2 10:27:16 2019
("http://translate.google.com/" curl (:args ("-s" "-L" "-A")))
-- begin --

-- end --
Fri Aug  2 10:29:08 2019
("http://translate.google.com/" emacs)
-- begin --

-- end --

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
works for me and stops the error

google-translate--search-tkk: Search failed: ",tkk:'"

This works for me with google-translate-backend-method set to 'curl. You also need to use require google-translate (if you are using use-package) before redefining the function. Hence my setup is

(require 'google-translate)
(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
(setq google-translate-backend-method 'curl)

This reply fixed it for me :

(use-package google-translate
  :ensure t
  :custom
  (google-translate-backend-method 'curl)
  :config
   (defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130)))

This should be useful to help implement a true fixed version:

https://github.com/Boudewijn26/gTTS-token/blob/master/docs/november-2020-translate-changes.md

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
(setq google-translate-backend-method 'curl)

works for me. Thanks!

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
(setq google-translate-backend-method 'curl)

works for me. Thanks!

this also work for my version: 0.12.0

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130))
(setq google-translate-backend-method 'curl)
works for me. Thanks!

this also work for my version: 0.12.0

I wonder why the maintainers don't include the 2 lines into google-translate sources?

(defun google-translate--search-tkk () "Search TKK." (list 430675 2721866130)) (setq google-translate-backend-method 'curl)

works for me. Thanks!

For me too.