Hi. I believe the marking of "machine translated", along with the rating, should be enough to inform the user.
I do take the take time to make machine translations after checking the sync is OK. Simply because a bad subtitle is better than no subtitle at all and because I know for certain that not everybody that could resync a subtitle for a particular release, would take the tame to do it. So this is my interpretation of giving out work into a community, I cover this technical part so somebody else could improve it.
I studied film and I'm from southamerica. Some material is practically impossible to get elsewhere. And certainly not everybody understands a second language. A rough translation it does have a cultural usefulness when you don't have another option... just like when you find and old celluloid film in bad condition you don't put it in the trash because the copy is bad: you value the fact that is the only copy.
A few days ago I did a machine translation of a few old german Sci-Fi movies. For someone that studies the genre, or even a plain fan of it, that rough translation does have a value. If I have the option, pursuing the best possible output, I do the translation from a close language; for example to italian from french, to swedish from german, to portuguese from spanish.
Yesterday some admin deleted an italian machine translation from a Christian Petzold movie that I did after I couldn't find it elsewhere. Today, two more in the same situation. "Akvanavty" (1979) is one of the few underwater Sci-Fi films. "Der Fall Gleiwitz" (1961) portraits the false flag attack that was used as an excuse for Germany to invade Poland, thus starting WWII. You see, both have an intrinsic historic value and the lack of subtitles at all, equals their status to "lost." Like the Alexandria Library. Gone.
So, if this is an open community, I can start a thread with the technical aspect done, so tomorrow the Michelangelo of translations can bless the human kind with subtleties. But until that moment, a rough translations DOES A LOT to put you in context and following the structure (something that a filmmaking or screenwriting student needs to analyze a film).
So, I understand the guidelines, but if an open community is about sharing knowledge, I'm afraid this guideline is contradicting this principle. I propose that admins at least check if the machine translated subtitle is the only one available in that particular language.
Kindly,
@argentronic