The automatic translator works best when the text you wish to translate uses proper grammar. Slang, misspelled words, poorly placed punctuation, and complex or lengthy sentences can all cause a page to be translated incorrectly. Expect Babel Fish to allow you to grasp the general intent of the original, not to produce a polished translation. By the way, you cannot get a good idea of the quality of a translation by translating the translated text. The more translations a piece of text goes through, the further the resulting words will be from the original.
Machine translation produces reasonable results in many cases.
But you should not rely on it. If you want to send a translated text to another person or use it in correspondence, always explain that you are using an automatic translator named Babel Fish and append or reference the original text. This acknowledgement will put the translation into the right context and will help you avoid embarrassing misunderstandings. When it's important to have an accurate translation, ask a human translator to polish the Babel Fish translation. Occasionally, a Web page you want to translate is on a slow server or the server has a poor network connection.