| I've worked on sites which have to be available in English, Spanish, German and French. The one rule we have (after early investigations) is that Translation Software is the worst solution for a website.
Your choices are:
1. Offer the site only in English. If the users really want to use it, they'll find someone who can speak English. (really! - if option 2 sounds feasible for you, then this is the best option!)
2. Use automated software. The worst of all choices. To check if it works, translate an average sentence into the foreign language of your choice, then translate the result back into English and see how it looks. It certainly won't be what you typed, in, but it's the foreign language equivalent.
(English->Spanish->English, on Google: "Using automated software. The worst of all options. To check if it works, translate a phrase in the middle of the foreign language of their choice, and translate the result back into English and see how it looks. Certainly not what you have written in, but is equivalent in a foreign language.")
3. Use a native translator. Use someone who is truly bilingual if possible. They will catch the gotchas - your use of slang or inappropriate terms, for example - and will provide a version of the text which won't be a literal translation, but which will have the same intent and feel. For a professional website, this is the best option. If the site needs to be written in a particular language, it's absolutely the only choice.
Automated translators are fine for ad-hoc use translating sentences in emails etc, but look at the translation above from Google. As a translation, it's excellent, but if someone pretending to write English copy had given me that, they wouldn't write any more copy for me.
Regards,
Pete. | 
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