Machine translation has gotten impressively good, but I still wouldn't trust it for anything important. Last week I used Google Translate for a work email to a Japanese client and it came back with a phrasing that was technically correct but culturally off. The issue is that nuance, tone, and context are things algorithms still miss, especially in languages with complex politeness systems like Japanese or Korean. Until translation tools can handle pragmatics as well as grammar, I'm sticking with humans for serious communication.