The laity’s image of a translator is a walking dictionary and grammar reference, who substitutes words and and grammatical structures from one language to another with ease, the reality is that a translators’ and interpreters’ work is mostly about ensuring context, navigating ambiguity, and handling cultural sensitivity. This is what Google Translate cannot currently do.
Indeed it turns out the number of available job opportunities for translators and interpreters has actually been increasing. This is not to say that the technology isn’t good, I think it’s pretty close to as good as it can be at what it does.
To give a simple example, Norwegian is an extremely closely related language to English and should be an easy translation candidate. The languages share a tonne of cognates, very similar grammar, and similar cultural context; even the idioms tend to translate verbatim. Yet there remain important cultural differences, and a particularly friction-prone one is Norwegian’s lack of polite language. It’s technically possible to say please in Norwegian (vær så snill, or vennligst), but Norwegians tend to prefer blunt communication, and these are not used much in practice. At the dinner table a Norwegian is likely to say something like “Jeg vil ha potetene” (literally “I will have the potatoes”, which sounds presumptuous and haughty in English) where a brit might say “Could I please have some potatoes?”. A good interpreter would have the necessary context for this (or ask for clarification if they’re not sure) and provide a sensitive translation, Google Translate just gives the blunt direct translation.