Others simply leave the responsibility of translating their marketing materials and manuals with their business agents and partners in the destination market, never knowing for sure whether the translation was done completely and accurately. These are all wrong approaches. It will make a major positive impression on your foreign clients and, if done correctly, reduce misunderstandings. The Internet has brought about a proliferation of online translation services, making it considerable easier to shop around for a good translation service. Basically, there are two categories of translation services to choose from - machine and human.
Machine translation is, of course, faster and cheaper than human translation.
Several firms are now providing instant online translation whereby you simply email or type in your document online, choose a language and click the mouse button for an instant translation. While this is all very good, you must keep in mind that machine translation uses a machine. It will simply follow whatever syntax rules it is given and churn out a grammatically correct translation. But it will miss almost every idiomatic expression and the like. It is therefore most suited to translating memos, letters and other daily documents, but not for important contracts, proposals or manuals.