All Products
Search
Document Center

Machine Translation:Machine Translation API FAQ

Last Updated:Jun 20, 2026

Error codes

Error code

Description

Solution

10001

Request timed out.

Retry the request.

10002

System error.

Retry the request.

10003

Failed to URL-decode the source text.

Verify that the text is UTF-8 encoded and properly URL-encoded.

10004

A required parameter is missing or has an invalid value.

Refer to the API reference for parameter requirements.

10005

The specified language pair is not supported.

Verify that the language pair is in the list of supported languages.

10006

Language identification failed.

Verify that the input text for language identification is valid.

10007

Translation failed.

Verify that the source text is valid.

10008

The source text exceeds the character limit.

Ensure that the source text is no longer than 5,000 characters.

19999

Unknown error.

Contact customer support.

Request character limit

For a single translation request, the source text must not exceed 5,000 characters. The service calculates the length using Java's String.length() <= 5000. For batch text translation, each text entry must not exceed 1,000 characters, and you can translate up to 50 entries per request. If you exceed the character limit, the request may time out and return an error.

How are characters counted?

The character count is based on the length of the source text. The count includes punctuation, spaces, and HTML tags. Each Chinese character, English letter, and punctuation mark counts as one character. For example:

Language

Source text

Character count

Chinese

The weather is nice today!

8

Custom translation services

If you require this capability, contact our customer support team at mt_support@list.alibaba-inc.com or join our DingTalk group: 23369411.

Defining non-translatable terms

Source text may contain words, acronyms, or code that you do not want to translate. Machine Translation provides a custom dictionary feature that allows you to specify these non-translatable elements. Uploading a bilingual dictionary ensures that specific terms or phrases in the translation output match the terms you have defined. See the following example: