One of the things you will notice when you launch your multilingual website are the e-mail messages you receive in different languages. If you are working for an international corporation with offices around the world, or if you have dealers and sales reps in the relevant countries, you can just forward the e-mail messages to them. But if you don't? Some of the e-mail inquiries you receive can lead to big sales, so you can't let them slip by.
Understanding the e-mail message is easy, just use any Machine Translation software, such as http://www.global-translation-services.com/freetranslation.asp. There is a MT for most of the language combinations. Once you have an idea of what the e-mail inquiry is about, you can decide how to handle it. If the deal is big enough, you should have no problem teaming up with someone local to try and get the business.
If your website has canned e-mail responses, get a translation company to translate the responses in the various languages and have your webmaster insert the translation in your content management system.
Using Machine Translation for e-mail responses in not recommended. There are tools available to do this (including Global Translations e-mail message tool) but any serious response to a business inquiry requires hand-crafting of the message you wish to deliver. Have a translator or a native speaker that knows your industry help you write the letter.
If you are receiving a steady flow of responses from a certain country, then perhaps it time you start thinking of setting up a local operation there.
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