On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 06:07:35AM +0900, Brian Wisti wrote:
> I've worked briefly at a company that prepared tools for translators.  My time 
> there was short (several months of contract work), but long enough to get the 
> idea that automated translation was not to be trusted.  For a real 
> translation of ideas and idioms, a human brain was needed.  A human brain 
> aided by their tools, of course ;-)

Incidentally there is a wonderful "I-Spy" photograph in the current edition
of Private Eye, a UK satirical magazine:

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/ispy.htm

(For the benefit of the archives, because this page will change: it's a
dual-language sign photographed in Chengda, China. On the top line are a
series of Chinese ideograms, and underneath the translation:
  "People railway for dumb millions")