Hee. As a Hebrew/English translator, I was actually able to decipher the original Hebrew question from the "translation". Someone on an Isareli mailing list suggested turning this story into a marketing campaign for the local translation association. It certainly is a golden opportunity to convince Israelis that they don't actually know English, and that the fact that the receptionist's neighbour lived in Idaho for a year when he was 9 doesn't qualify him to translate much of anything.

LOL!

What about the Brit who's spent a couple of holidays in the Dordogne? Or even the young French guy who was a waiter in France and who's just got off the Eurostar?

Tried the "there and back" method with German on your sentence. Result:
"They would have their turn better to rent a professional translator"

Having said that, very occasionally I actually use this MT package, but only as an extra "dictionary" in the course of my translation process - I feed it my source sentence, and look to see if there are any scraps or phrases which will help me with the wording of my translation (and supplement the suggested rendering in my CAT program). But when I do this, I always need a generous dose of scepticism - there are sometimes useful titbits in there, but I would never trust the program further than I could throw it, because it often gets the wrong end of the stick entirely.

I would never use Babel Fish for my work, but I do sometimes use it to get the gist of an article written in a language I don't know (i.e. all of them bar 3).

Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly - it wasn't Babelfish that I used (and that I use occasionally), it was a commercial program. (And I only use it very occasionally, only for suggestions and never for finished work).

I must admit I was surprised to hear that anyone used Babel Fish for translation work - mystery solved.