I'd like to buy really first rate German-English translation software. Any recommendations?

You dont have to buy it

there are lots of german translations free lol

I would imagine that even a translation done by the best translation software on the market would not be quite up to par with a human translation, simply because language is such a complex thing. You could maybe get a half-decent *draft* translation, but it would still require human-translator cleanup. There are lots of idiomatic expressions that translation software would have to be programmed to recognize.

A simple example would be the construction "es gibt". It often means "there is" or "there are", but in certain contexts it can also mean the literal "it gives", and it isn't always easily possible to create software that will recognize those contexts for what they are. Another example is "roter Faden", which literally means "red thread", but more commonly translates as "central theme" or "leitmotif".

See also http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aqs0p... for a more sophisticated example. The literal translation of the clause I needed help with there is "there apparently all must through".

Then there are idiomatic expressions such as "Birds of a feather flock together." In German there is no bird-related saying meaning the same thing; the same idea is expressed in German as "Gleich und gleich gesellt sich gern."