Babel Fish

Will Babel Fish ever work satisfactorily? An interesting question, to be sure. There are so many intricacies to language; words have different meanings in different contexts, we use idioms that literally translated mean something completely different than what we mean to say, and so on. That is why online translators give us translations that are sometimes quite comical.
In an episode of the TV series “Get Smart”, there is a character that is a robot. His master has to be careful with what he says to him, because he takes everything literally. The scientist tells the robot to “take off” and pursue agent 86, but the machine-man merely stands in one place and flaps his arms. This is very much like what an online translator would interpret a text.
In order for a translating program to work at its fullest potential, the programmer would have to put every idiomatic expression known to man into the database. Not an easy task by any means. It would be impractical, and it would still be an imperfect system. Babel Fish and Google translate definitely have ample room for improvement, and perhaps they will improve greatly in the next few years, but I don’t think that they will ever be perfect.
Much of understanding language involves making judgments on what we hear based on our knowledge. For instance, if someone says to us, “break a leg,” we know that they are wishing us luck, not physical injury (hopefully). But could a computer discern the difference? If the programmer told the computer that “break a leg” meant “good luck,” then what happens when a text is actually referring to a broken leg? This is why I believe that these things will never be perfect, and that human judgment is needed in a successful interpretation of language.

*EDIT*
In response to Mr. Philpot's comment, "But if you tell a computer to translate 'break' into 'good luck' every time it is mentioned within an immediate proximity of 'a leg', then it can translate it properly. Couldn't it?"
Here is why I disagree. Let's say we have the sentence, "My mom won't let me skateboard; she's afraid I'll break a leg." This would translate into "My mom won't let me skateboard; she's afraid I'll good luck." I really don't believe that there is a way around this.