Preparing contracts and marketing materials or developing a Web site can be quite demanding. Taking on these projects in a language other than your own, however, presents a whole new set of challenges and potential headaches.

When expanding your business into the international arena, you can help alleviate these growing pains with a translation service. These services typically translate business materials, technical manuals, contracts, patents, marketing collateral, business cards and other documents. They also provide more complex services such as multilingual Web site development and software localization. The trick is picking a service provider who will get it right the first time.

It is critical to work with a translation service that takes a rigorous approach to the translator selection process, which should include not only resume screening and test translations but also previous client reviews and experience. Some companies may even supply you with translator resumes to show they have experience translating for your industry.

Some translation agencies work closely with and recruit from translator training centers and schools. The better services hire only native translators who translate into their mother tongue and who reside and work in the country of the target language.

Having a native speaker who still lives in the target country helps ensure that the document will reflect the latest lingo, which is important for creating marketing materials. If the translator lives in the United States and translates in German, for example, that person's proficiency in German has the potential to deteriorate with each passing year away from their language community.

Ideally, you should have a second person who is fluent in the target language - perhaps a colleague in the target country -serve as an editor to review and proofread your document. Some services may also offer "back translation," in which they ship out the translated text to be translated back into the original language by another translator to check accuracy.

Translation services can also help localize your Web site, which means that the site is not only translated but also adapted to address local cultural sensitivities. In addition, sites may require a redesign since most conversions from English to another language result in an expansion of 20 to 60 percent more characters.

Pricing for translations usually runs anywhere from 12 cents to 30 cents per word of source language, depending on the target language, type of text, subject matter, length of the document, desired turnaround time and other criteria, such as volume. Hourly rates can range from $20 to $90 per hour for additional services such as consistency checking and editing, linguistic quality assurance, proofreading, graphic re-sizing and desktop publishing.

Tight deadlines, changing the source content continually during late stages of a project, and changing the format of the deliverable files can each add to your costs.

It may seem like a daunting experience to step into the world of international business. With a reliable translation service, however, you can rest easy that your message is making the leap into another language intact.