Likewise for the museum at Panama Viejo here in Panama. The English is quite awkward and stilted, and some words are mistranslated. With the number of native English speakers here, you would think they could have hired one to edit the text. On the other hand, the exhibit center at the Panal Canal Miraflores Locks has pretty good bilingual text.
This can be very entertaining. One of my favorite recent ones was in Deadwood, where the Spanish subtitles consistently referred to Al Swearengen’s saloon as the Gimnasio (Gymnasium). I was mystified until I realized that the translator had misheard Gem as Gym.
Even if the online translators were any good, why on Earth would anyone ever hire a professional translator who bragged about using them? If you want an automated translation, you can get that for free yourself. What did they think the professional would be doing, to earn es fee?
This shows how many otherwise capable people know nothing about anything to do with computers, let alone what BabelFish is.
These are the sort of businessmen who get their secretaries to manage their e-mail and don’t know the difference between an e-mail address and a website URL.
Apparently, the impression they gave was that they had access to translation software that wasn’t available free on the web. And, presumably, that this software was much BETTER than the web-versions available…
