Translation is on by default, so your call to translate(-octetstring => 0x1) is really a no-op. The translation of OCTET STRINGs is done by a pattern match. See the "translate() - enable or disable the translation mode for the object" section of the documentation which discusses what triggers translation for an OCTET STRING. The string you are receiving back might be all printable according to the module and no translation is taking place. If that is the case, you would need to turn translation off, and then use unpack() to format your string. See a related "bug" report at http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=27819.