For several languages, Google Translate is the first freely available machine translation system for these languages. Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and team is working hard to improve translation quality. Statistical models are built from vast quantities of monolingual and translated texts using automated machine learning techniques.
It’s exciting and satisfying to work on a product that can help people access content they may otherwise be unable to understand. Team have heard stories of people using Google Translate to help them do business internationally, and Google have seen many websites (e.g., New York’s Metro Transit Authority) and blogs add the Google Translate My Page Gadget to their pages to make their content more accessible to people from all over the world.