By the way, if you're curious about how good Google Translate might be, a good test is to input an English passage, have it translate it to Japanese, and then take that result and translate it back into English. The fidelity of the result give you a god idea about how good the translation software might be.
I chose the following two stanzas from a Children's nursery rhyme
Mary had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.
He followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.
Into Japanese and back again, and we have the following:
Mary had a little lamb,
His fleece is was white as snow
Mary, that you are everywhere I went
Lamb was please do go.
He was chasing her on the day of school
This was opposed to the rule
Made to play it, children and laughter
Please refer to the lamb at school.
It's not too bad, I suppose, especially if you already know the English version and can compare, but consider that the diction is appropriate to a young child. It does a lot worse with more sophisticated language as adults might use.
