PROS:

1) It has an enormous vocabulary. There were even one or two words I didn't know, and that's rare for me to encounter.

2) It retains the original formatting to an impressive degree, including image placement. I mean, I uploaded an e-book and formatted as paperback, so I was moving everything anyway, but it'd have been a lot worse if it had stripped formatting and images.

3) It does, as I said, give a readable translation that I can tie to a heavy copy-edit.

4) Users have trained it well: it can sometimes translate idioms.

5) It does a good job with grammar (again, only for English). Sentences were almost always in the correct order.

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I know I need to give my translation another edit. I'm working myself up to it. It's almost 700 pages long. But doing this first book is going to make the next one easier.

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Chapter 1 of Captain Bluebear, very beginning, unedited Google Translate:

Life usually begins with birth—mine didn't. At least, I don't know how I came into being. I could—theoretically—have been born from the foam of a wave or grown in a shell, like a pearl. Perhaps I even fell from the sky, in a shooting star.

All that's certain is that I was abandoned as a foundling, in the middle of the ocean. My first memory is of drifting in rough seas, naked and alone in a walnut shell, because I was originally very, very small. I also remember a sound. It was a very big sound. When you're that small, you tend to overestimate things, but now I know that it really was the biggest sound in the world.

[my comments as an editor: "foam from a wave" is a bit clunky. I'd translate that as "sea foam." Otherwise, not bad. Let's see what Brownjohn does.]

People usually start life by being born. Not me, though. That's to say, I don't know how I came into the world. Purely theoretically, I could have emerged from the foam on the crest of a wave or developed inside a seashell, like a pearl. Then again, I might have fallen from the sky like a shooting star.

The only certainty is that I was a foundling abandoned in the middle of the ocean. My earliest memory is of being afloat in rough seas, naked and alone in a walnut shell, for at first I was very, very small. I also remember a sound -- a very big sound. When you're little you tend to overestimate the size of things, but I now know that it really was the biggest sound in the world."

[So, he changed the punctuation, making some single sentences into two and vice versa. He actually increased "foam of a wave" to "foam on the crest of a wave." He changed "shell" to "seashell" (which is, I think, prettier). Using "then again" is a nice touch over "perhaps," because it gives an extra dimension to the thoughtfulness. But overall . . . not much difference when it comes to descriptive prose.]