[klaus]

I have tried both, Google and Babel, with your text.
The translations back to English are less funny than the French translations. Even with a lot of imagination they are almost not understandable.
But your text is a technical text and in these cases the software translators are really weak.
This reminds me some user's guides of consumer products I read.
For more standard text they are usefull.
I regulary look at the B4PPC Foreign Language Forums and translate the texts with Google. It is really much better and understandable than the translations of your text.
I know how difficult translations are, so I don't decry these software translators.
What I found with your text is, that the Google translator gave a much more realistic French translation than Babel did. But a few phrases were better translated by Babel than by Google.

Best regards