Well, if they had access to it, that would be possible. But the priviliged position of people from a well-enough background in western countries that can enroll in universities etc. to study Pali is not comparable to the situation of people in other contries where a systematic Pali curriculum is not established.
The point I want to make is: Learning the primary sources in order to engage with the material has so far been the privilige of a (mainly white) aristocratic elite class in Western countries, and people with less privileged status usually don’t survive the academic treadmill long enough. Not everybody can afford the time to learn these languages well enough, but the desire to interact with traditional material is nonetheless there.
I think the biggest positive effect of machine translation will be democratization of access to the material.
That of course lies at odds with both the academic and the broader Buddhist tradition, where gate-keeping of knowledge is an integral part of establishing hierarchy.
Sure, you can do that. I would compare machine translation here to how wonder bread compares to proper bread. Nobody can argue that the former is better than the latter, but wonder bread is certainly better than no bread.
