Localization is complex, but it is nothing to be scared of. It can be done with proper forethought and planning, but it is by no means trivial. The translation

Localization is complex, but it is nothing to be scared of. It can be done with proper forethought and planning, but it is by no means trivial. The translation itself can be tedious. Actually getting the translations onto your site is more difficult. Maintaining translations as your original content changes is where the fun starts. I have had experience localizing web applications and it was not pleasant. We had to design the site from the start to account for multiple languages. It complicated the design. The alternate languages were, at best, several days behind the original English. A couple weeks was more typical. Localizing an existing site where we had not planned for it from the start was not practical. Personally, I would recommend outsourcing localization if that is an option. It just isn't worth it to do it yourself. It is time consuming. More importantly, the time spent localizing is time not spent on your real business. Then again, I am completely biased because I make my living at a company where we provide this exact service. (It may be a shameless plug, but it's on topic and might be useful to someone... The name of the company I work for is in my profile.)