When people are able to properly communicate with each other, they are able to understand each other better. Humans have a tendency to feel that they are the center of everything. There's even a special word when you realize other people have as much of a life as yours, called sonder. The more this feeling is there, the more empathetic and understanding people are of each other. When people are more empathetic they are better at working together, and eventually improving life for everyone. I find it appalling that in the midst of all our technological advancement, it is still extremely difficult to be able to communicate with a person that speaks another language unless you dedicate a significant amount of time to learning their language, and even then you will never really reach a level at which you will be able to have really meaningful conversations unless you use the language frequently. I'm no programmer and I don't know how any of these translation services work, but it seems like a lot more work should be dedicated to improving them.
This whole thing came to mind when a Chinese person joined Hyuns Dojo. She wasn't able to speak proper English at all and no one their could speak Chinese (until lf2 showed up). Google translate would give some extremely butchered results, and for some reason she felt offended when told her she should speak English. Who knows? Maybe the translation of an otherwise neutral statement sounded passive aggressive when translated literally to Chinese? Translation blunders could have significant effects larger than just some random girl on the Internet getting offended:
http://www.lackuna.com/2012/04/13/5-historically-legendary-translation-blunders/
Some of these could be a bit of a stretch, but it's not difficult to imagine a scenario were miscommunication due to language barriers could lead to serious problems.