I'm surprised there's little mention of either context or culture. I think those are two of the most important elements of translation. Without context, it's

I'm surprised there's little mention of either context or culture. I think those are two of the most important elements of translation. Without context, it's impossible to know the tone, or sometimes even the actual grammar/conjugation of translations for certain languages (I'm thinking Korean/Chinese but this probably applies for other languages as well). Context also helps tremendously with disambiguation, one huge flaw in machine translation. Culture is another interesting aspect. What somebody might translate as a greeting might require a totally different literal translation in another language, but it's always hard to justify translations that aren't exactly literal. This usually impacts tone quite a bit. From my experience, conversational style for the major Asian languages is indirect and hinting. Most people already understand the importance of cultural differences, this is strongly present in speech as well.