I'm not sure if it's related to the translator, but 3 of my websites using the translator have experienced a big google penalty recently.

I am just curious if anyone else is experiencing a big drop in google traffic and rankings. It's possible there is another reason, I just want to hear from others.

Again, I doubt it is because of the wonderful translator, I just want to hear an opinion. If nobody else has this problem, then it's obviously not because of it!

There is no reason for Google to penalize your site for using Translator when they are providing the same service using widgets. The difference is that with Translator Plugin Pro or Gold, the translated pages belong to your own site and are not that of Google. Even then if you are in doubt then ensure that you are using a different IP set to translate your pages (requires Gold version) than the IP your site is hosted on. You can also change the priority of the engines so Google is not the first engine.
You can also permanently exclude Google from translating your pages by inactivating it in the database. Google is just one of the 6 engines we use for Translator Plugin Pro. In Gold Google 8 engines are used and Google is merely one of them.