To illustrate just how much automated translators still have to go, Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped used Google and Babelfish to translate Garfield from English to Chinese and then back to English. The results are fantastically non-sensical, and in some cases, probably funnier than what Jim Davis originally drew!
You enter some English text, pick a language and click the Fish button. It will translate your text into the language you picked and back again into English.