It's shocking that such a naive model produces such good results. I suspect it has to do with the languages they are translating: if they wanted to translate Japanese to German it would take more sophisticated methods.
Culture is another interesting aspect. What somebody might translate as a greeting might require a totally different literal translation in another language, but it's always hard to justify translations that aren't exactly literal. This usually impacts tone quite a bit. From my experience, conversational style for the major Asian languages is indirect and hinting. Most people already understand the importance of cultural differences, this is strongly present in speech as well.