This also happen on a simple discourse_docker official installation, using some automated restore test over pipeline every morning of the week. This similar error suddenly appeared in the failed pipeline.
I, [2026-05-20T07:59:01.413128 #1] INFO -- : > cd /var/www/discourse && su discourse -c 'bundle
exec rake db:migrate'
2026-05-20 07:59:09.214 UTC [1576] discourse@discourse ERROR: relation "translation_overrides" does not exist at character 523
2026-05-20 07:59:09.214 UTC [1576] discourse@discourse STATEMENT: SELECT a.attname, format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod),
pg_get_expr(d.adbin, d.adrelid), a.attnotnull, a.atttypid, a.atttypmod,
c.collname, col_description(a.attrelid, a.attnum) AS comment,
attidentity AS identity,
attgenerated as attgenerated
FROM pg_attribute a
LEFT JOIN pg_attrdef d ON a.attrelid = d.adrelid AND a.attnum = d.adnum
LEFT JOIN pg_type t ON a.atttypid = t.oid
LEFT JOIN pg_collation c ON a.attcollation = c.oid AND a.attcollation <> t.typcollation
WHERE a.attrelid = '"translation_overrides"'::regclass
AND a.attnum > 0 AND NOT a.attisdropped
ORDER BY a.attnum
2026-05-20 07:59:13.167 UTC [1627] discourse@discourse ERROR: schema "discourse_functions" already exists
2026-05-20 07:59:13.167 UTC [1627] discourse@discourse STATEMENT: CREATE SCHEMA discourse_functions;
psql:/var/www/discourse/db/structure.sql:16: ERROR: schema "discourse_functions" already exists
rake aborted!
The root cause was a version mismatch between restored backup and container code.
The latest Discourse code has a model referencing translation_overrides, but the production database (from the backup) is on an older version where this table either doesn’t exist yet or has a different name.
what worked for me is to rebuild first (which creates the schema from scratch), then restore the backup. The restore process uses Discourse’s built-in restore which properly drops and recreates the database.