translating foreign texts to create unique english content - does it work ?

So I was wondering. Say I want unique articles about a certain subject. What if I was to find articles that were written in another language, translate them using any of the free translation services, edit them a bit (max 1 minute to add some keyword density) and then post it as my own unique article. Will google recognize this? Does google already have all cached pages translated?

Let me know what you think!

Unless you know both languages and proof-read everything, the content is usually unreadable. I can do that since english is my second language, but i think that rewritting content from the same language is easier, faster and better.

I've done this extensively with a shop I run and its worked out great. You may need to spend more than a minute editing though as the translations can be pretty rough. Its a LOT quicker than writing form scratch though and cheaper than paying for them.