Recently my company decided to roll out versions in multiple languages. We wrestled for a while about how to do it, since writing 400 pages of content in 10 different languages would require quite a few content writers. Finally we decided to make 5 page mini sites with all our important sections. Any other link on the site has a javascript alert box which warns of an english only section. Within less then a week our site was ranking on google for our primary keywords in french, german, and portuguese (only languages launched so far). All the keywords are getting good traffic and sending in sales. After launching each section I created 1 link from a country tld and language site. Soon after this we rolled out PPC campaigns targeting these pages and this also met with high conversion rates. Anyhow I know this doesn't work for everybody, but ranking nearly instantly for high priced keywords is very useful at times!