I think Joe Knapp is right: “Are we talking about making an additional site in the local country or selling to that country?”. I have a translation website and I have a good knowledge of targetting the Hispanic Community. I think it is very different to sell for a specific country than to sell internationally. A good suggestion would be to translate to the language your customers use most. Regarding the Spanish Language, it is very important to understand that each country has it own regionalism and colloquial language. However, if you would like your message to reach Hispanics in US, then Neutral Spanish can be used so that the text is widely understood by all the Hispanic population, no matter if they are from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guatemala or Chile.
An example of how a word can be translated depending on the Spanish Speaking country and how it can be translated using Neutral Spanish.
Car
Mexico: carro
Argentina: auto
Neutral Spanish: automóvil

Defininetely, DO NOT use a translation tool!! The translation has to be made by a professional translator NATIVE in the target language AND if you are targetting a specific country, the translator should be from that country.

Also, if you will be translating your site to Spanish, take into account that Spanish translators sometimes use two, three or even more words to translate a single English compound word. In general, a Spanish document will be twenty percent longer than its English counterpart.

Some resources:
Hispanic Community in US http://www.transpanish.biz/spanish-stats.htm
Machine Translation vs. Human Translation http://transpanish.biz/translation_blog/machine-translation-vs-human-translation-pay-less-get-less/
The use of Neutral Spanish for the US Hispanic Market http://transpanish.biz/translation_blog/the-use-of-neutral-spanish-for-the-us-hispanic-market/

Thanks for this information. As previosuly said much of it has been well documented before however I think your post inspired some good comments with links to additional sources which alltogether makes this a really good post for scraping the surface of the subject. Right, I have about 6 different tabs open on this now, best get reading.

Thanks Again and if I get anymore insight into the subject I will be sure to come back and share.

Cheers,

Victoria

do not use online translator!!! Google translator is cool, it helps but for an international SEO campaign it doesn’t work!
let’s say we want to translate the idiomatic phrase “it’s a piece of cake” (meaning something very easy) in italian with google translator.
it will translate it literally “E ‘un pezzo di torta” (using the wrong accent by the way): google think we are talking about cakes!

here you can find some good tips you need to consider when planning a multilingual SEO international campaign

http://www.seobloom.com/article/111/international-seo-and-geolocation-top-10-factors/

THINK GLOBAL: SEO LOCAL!!

Just trying to give some advice, not criticize (what the hell have I posted?? nothing…so who am I to complain). Just think there is an amazing opportunity for a good writer with a blog that gets traffic to publish something NEW about international SEO.

Here’s another topic…international link buying. Trying finding some info on that. There is almost nothing. Come up with a couple good posts on these topics and you’re bound to attract some serious attention from the SEO community.