A Popular argument against machine translation

A POPULAR ARGUMENT AGAINST MACHINE TRANSLATION

Whether or not you travel a lot, do you agree that translation is not just a matter of replacing words with words?

Speaking as a self-employed translator, translation is indeed not just a matter of replacing words with words. But how vocal can you be (or are prepared to be) on this subject? Because I know it’s not just people like me who have had something to say about this subject, by a long way.

I have written extensively on this sort of thing, in this business blog. But right here I want to propose a genuinely popular argument against relying on machine translation. It’s like this: if you type something in language A into Google Translate to translate it into language B, but then translate the product of that back into language A, you will almost always end up with something different from what you had in language A to begin with. Care to compare this result with what you proposed to begin with? I mean, check this for an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7oYn0nPij4

I am fully prepared to be studious about such a subject, even though I am as inclined to consider it humorous as most other people do.

That said, maybe I should propose a game of a list of imperfect translation examples inviting people to guess “by chance or deliberate error?”.