internet - Make online translations sense?

In our effort to make the world look flat, a friend suggested today that I could use very well an online translation service. It is part of the old myth that the internet can bring down all barriers and world peace will be around the corner.
I'm rather sceptical about that prospects and why I would love to communicated with everybody in their own language, also about the practical execution I have been a sceptic. A few years ago I wrote a book on China in Dutch, that was translated into German and some publishers suggested I should get it out in English too.
Unfortunately, none of the British or American publishers I spoke to knew their languages, so they actually suggested I should translate the book first myself. Since I had nor the time nor the ambition to translate my own book, I turned to an automated translation service and pushed a German chapter through the digital pipe. The result was a disaster and I abandoned the idea.
Now these systems could have been improved and I had already installed Babelfish from Altavita on my system.
Then I turned to Global Voices, since they provide sometimes both valuable translations from Chinese into English and the original text. I picked this at random:

当你翻到本页时，相信你的眼光一定会在这里长久停留。这里的人你一定见过，当你急匆匆走过地下铁的通道，当你到某个政府办公楼去办事，也许某个角落就有他们的身影，他们在你不经意的余光里，在你匆匆的惊诧里。他们是长久哀怨、悲愤的一群人，他们因某一意外而改变了人生轨迹，奔波于故乡和大都市，顽强地追逐一个说法、一个公正的梦想。他们是固执而又乐观的人群，他们日复一日地失望，年复一年地坚持，始终坚守着我们民族几千年来对”青天”和”人间自有公道”的一线信仰。

This was what Babelfish produced:

When you turn to this page, believed your judgement certainly can for a long time pause in here. Here person you a definite opinion, when you hurriedly pass through underground hard the channel, when handle matters you to some government office building, perhaps some quoin has their form, they in your nonchalant Yu Guangli, in your in a hurry being amazed. They are long-time are plaintive, grief and indignation group of people, they changed the life path because of some accident, rushes about to the hometown and the metropolis, tenaciously pursues one by one a view, a fair dream. They are tenacious and the optimistic crowd, they day after day are disappointed, persisted year after year, throughout is persevering our nationality several millenniums comes to "the blue sky" and "the world innate justice" a belief.

It is actually fun to see what the software has done, but that only works if you have a very clear idea what this text is about. This is what the humans at Global Voices made out of the text:

As you scroll down this page, what you see will make you stop and look. The people here you’ve surely seen before, as you hurry through underground corridors, as you stop by government buildings to take care of matters, or in some corner, you see their shadow out of the corner of your eye, which astonishes you as you rush. They are a group of long-sorrowful, long-grieving people, the course of whose lives have been changed by some accident, rushing about their hometowns and the city, doggedly pursuing a verdict, a dream of justice. They are both an obstinate and optimistic group, disappointed day after day, persevering year after year, all along holding on to our people’s millennia-old faith in “blue sky” and “justice in the world”.

For the time being, the world is not flat enough to dismis all our translators.