For the record, this is what the guidelines say: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If

For the record, this is what the guidelines say: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." So while most mundane political stories (ie, the election cycle, politician gaffs, etc.) are pretty clearly off-topic, there are some stories with political, social and economic ramifications that I'd count as being highly on-topic, such as stories relating to universal basic income. As evidence, I'd submit the fact that YCombinator itself is sponsoring research into basic income. More to the point for this particular post, the topic of translation, both human and machine, is intellectually gratifying to many hackers, including ones as illustrious as Douglas Hofstadter. Are you prepared to argue otherwise?