Not a bad idea, guess I am old school. Last time I really attempted something like this was in the later 90s. I ended up buying a kana chart a dictionary, and used old altavista.com search when needed. Translated the menus through the instruction manual (and the rest too) for Hokuto no Ken 6 SFC. I had a little help from a co-worker then which was this half Japanese girl on the harder kanji parts.
Clearly using google translate as a badass crutch and other sources to smooth some edges would be far easier. I kind of wish I had that then.