diff --git a/examples/pytorch/translation/run_translation.py b/examples/pytorch/translation/run_translation.py
index 37bb37b3d86..04a05fc477f 100755
--- a/examples/pytorch/translation/run_translation.py
+++ b/examples/pytorch/translation/run_translation.py
@@ -469,6 +469,19 @@ def main():
     source_lang = data_args.source_lang.split("_")[0]
     target_lang = data_args.target_lang.split("_")[0]
 
+    # Check the whether the source target length fits in the model, if it has absolute positional embeddings
+    if (
+        hasattr(model.config, "max_position_embeddings")
+        and not hasattr(model.config, "relative_attention_max_distance")
+        and model.config.max_position_embeddings < data_args.max_source_length
+    ):
+        raise ValueError(
+            f"`--max_source_length` is set to {data_args.max_source_length}, but the model only has"
+            f" {model.config.max_position_embeddings} position encodings. Consider either reducing"
+            f" `--max_source_length` to {model.config.max_position_embeddings} or using a model with larger position "
+            "embeddings"
+        )
+
     # Temporarily set max_target_length for training.
     max_target_length = data_args.max_target_length
     padding = "max_length" if data_args.pad_to_max_length else False