The permanent evolution of technology and science along with the flood of information that it generates bears a significant influence on translation which is more and more regarded as an indispensable tool in transmitting knowledge, but also as a product that must meet quality requirements as any other product on the market. Moreover, the development of Machine Translation (MT) brings along significant changes in our way of considering and analysing translation. In this context, the author analyses the present status of MT, the ways in which MT can be improved and most importantly, he tries to demonstrate that MT can help translation theorists and linguists to develop new insights on translation and linguistics. The author thus claims that MT can not only be an aim in itself, but also a research field, a means for studying other disciplines.