I realized that things start acting funny when words have two or more meanings. Technical texts, at least the common ones (design / applications) risk less having that problem.
I recall reading (previous translation to English) a superb (but dense) text on op amps in German. Translation came crystal clear.
Just as a simple example: it took Google translator several years to translate "cuñado" (Spanish) to "brother in law" or vice versa. According to their approach, something like definitions based on statistics, plus added corrections supplied by interested users (I do, very seldom, form times to times) they move in the right direction but I suspect they could not avoid the stumbling block of expressions where the meaning is given by context more than face value.
Definitely Babel, started an unending confusion but a nice source of fun as well.