diff --git a/bert_score/utils.py b/bert_score/utils.py
index 649ebeb..3ec0a7c 100644
--- a/bert_score/utils.py
+++ b/bert_score/utils.py
@@ -109,7 +109,8 @@ def sent_encode(tokenizer, sent):
 
         if LooseVersion(transformers.__version__) >= LooseVersion("3.0.0"):
             return tokenizer.encode(
-                sent, add_special_tokens=True, add_prefix_space=True, max_length=tokenizer.max_len, truncation=True
+                sent, add_special_tokens=True, add_prefix_space=True, max_length=tokenizer.model_max_length,
+                truncation=True
             )
         else:
             return tokenizer.encode(sent, add_special_tokens=True, add_prefix_space=True, max_length=tokenizer.max_len)
@@ -117,7 +118,8 @@ def sent_encode(tokenizer, sent):
         import transformers
 
         if LooseVersion(transformers.__version__) >= LooseVersion("3.0.0"):
-            return tokenizer.encode(sent, add_special_tokens=True, max_length=tokenizer.max_len, truncation=True)
+            return tokenizer.encode(sent, add_special_tokens=True, max_length=tokenizer.model_max_length,
+                                    truncation=True)
         else:
             return tokenizer.encode(sent, add_special_tokens=True, max_length=tokenizer.max_len)