If it's ceased to function on 5.3, then, I'd suspect that google have changed something (assuming it uses Google translate) and the plugin isn't getting a response.

As for 5.4, it seems that Python itself has had a security patch of some sort between 5.3 and 5.4, and that means the plugin should now be URL encoding anything it sends out as a query.

Either way, the plugin author needs to do some work. You might find the patch Abu mentioned on the linuxsat forum helps while you're waiting. If you do patch httplib.py from that link, don't believe the poster thgat says that it's "ATV's stupid changes": This has been triggered by the people that maintain Python itself. The plugin should actually have been doing the URL encoding properly in the first place, but has been getting away with it until now.