Google Cloud Apps API Translate extension crashing (Solved)

Airtable Questions
1

Anybody seen the issue? The Google Extension crashing. It doesn’t even allow me to enter the API key, change it. The extension also does not work.

Emailed Airtable support but so far no response or fix.

The extension was working fine last month and haven’t changed anything on Google Cloud apps account. If there was something wrong I assume if would tell me my API key is expired or something.

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Update:
Please ignore this, at least for now. Seems Google Cloud has issue, some pages in the Google Cloud console are not loading on Google’s end.

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2

I apologize for wasting board space here…

False alarm.

I turns out Google Private / Incognito mode is the issue. It blocks that pop-up that shows when the Google Translate extension runs informing me about costs. No issue running in the normal browser session.

Issue resolved. I am leaving the post here in case somebody searches same issue.

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1 Like
3

Thee observations:

  1. Extensions are typically fabricated without regard for precise automation. Airtable needs to
  2. Google Translate is better at this task than OpenAI, but not for long.
  3. Translate is free while GPT services have a cost.

I think AGI will be the go-to solution for this and especially where automation is required. This is a pretty good assessment, but I think it was done back in the early days of AGI (Jan 2023).

4

Yes right. For this base here is just new vocabulary so Google works fine. I would have used Deepl for sentences, superior to Google, but would need to glue it with Make.com.

I just figured it wasn’t even private/incognito mode in this case (although that causes also issues with Airtable extensions) but the browser has updated its Adblock feature and that is waht was blocking the Google Translate popup about Confirming API costs. So I am adding it here as solution in case somebody looks.

5

Yeah - the pitfalls of using a browser as a hybrid API for automation. It’s brittle and prone to failure. The right way to build a translation extension is React or to proxy the translation process with a custom web UI.

I used to be a fan of Bardeen. It has its moments, but the moments are not worth the time you need to invest to get anything to work reliably.

7

Yes, Bardeen was designed for different purpose in mind.