So I've made some friend when I was abroad in Taiwan and we still communicate sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in Mandarin Chinese, either writing the phonetics or just using the translator.
They did call me out, saying "HEY! you didn't learn Chinese! you used a translator!"
So the same way that we detect something sounds/looks robotic happens on another language.
However, learning a little Chinese I found out that most of the "bad machine translating" came from the WAY it's being translated.
I figured out that maybe the translator, especially from English to Chinese mandarin, translate according to known phrases and sentences.
I may be wrong, but then again, I'm here to be corrected and to learn with you!
So! How trustworthy is Machine Translation with ASIAN languages?