This article presents a brief reaction to Harold Somers' article Current research in machine translation. The author suggest some views on the evaluation of MT research, essentially claiming that Somers' remarks are relevant but would gain substantially by being embedded inside a somewhat wider and more differentiated perspective on the field in question. The beginnings of such a wider perspective are to be seen in two questions: 1) how is the history of MT evaluated to date?; 2) which changes in directions are suggested? Then the author proposses to relate the answers to three communities involved in MT: researchers, translators ane companies, institutions and individuals buying MT systems.