Google was recently given the highest rating in a government test (National Institute of Standards and Technology) of machine translation tools online.

Google describes its "automatic translation" as being "...produced automatically by state-of-the-art technology without the intervention of human translators." This seems like a strange word choice, almost as if 'intervention' is being used pejoratively.

Once again, an odd choice of words!

I think it will be some time before the translation experience sans humans is immediate, or in real-time as well as intelligible, but there are certainly varying expectations and definitions when it comes to requiring a "quick and seamless translation experience."

We at McElroy would like to think that for what it's worth, a human intervention can be quite helpful, and what's more, on those projects that go beyond the translation of a phrase or sentence, we are pretty darn good at offering our clients a quick and seamless translation experience.

Finally, I leave you with a humorous twist on the classic translation/back-translation every purveyor of human linguistic expertise loves to perform, using Google's language tools. Yes, it's been done a million times, but I hope you'll appreciate the humor of this one. (The component that really brings the entire deck of cards down is, of course, the missing accent in "mamá,")

English:
Sally's mom is very nice.

Spanish:
La mama de la salida es muy agradable.

Back to English:
The breast of the exit is very pleasant.