yet another word pro-MT
I keep saying this when ever MT comes up: it is not all evil and it is (at least in my view) not a threat to human translators. Look at it from this perspective: the volume of translation required has been increasing like mad since the advent of the internet and spam mail. Being an old philosopher myself, I know how long it can take to read one chapter of a book - so I can not imagine that there are not enough people to read all the content that has been put online on the net. But maybe there are enough companies that think that putting their stuff online in different languages will do their sales good (and they are most likely right). So if you sell you product in a foreign market, you need quite a range of translation services. In that scenario there is enough volume that needs to be done by human translators who know the target culture. But there is also enough content that, if written smartly, can be translated at least using MT to support a human translator.
This, in my view, is a challenge for Language Service Providers: not only to provide the translation, but also solutions for all communication needs in order to offer their clients tailor-made-communications. A challenge even for the possibly best translation company in the world.