We already had more sophistcated technology when the game came out. The auto translate was created because it was *fast.* neither the server nor the client really had to do much of any work as it's just a look up table with 4 (well now two) entries for each translation item. And perhaps more importantly, when using only set phrases, you can ensure the translation is far more accurate. While google translate has gotten better over time, it's still far from perfect, and that's less a fault of the technology and more the fault of the nuance of language- literal translation loses the meaning but the meaning of a statement isn't always concrete in every language.

While the tech has gotten way better I still don't think it's the best idea because mistranslations (which are still common) can cause unintended friction.