thanks for the reply Dave.
i have heard about translation on the fly services ranging from free to £££.
i remember trying to use babelfish for my spanish studies a couple of years ago, and whilst it is ok to translate a few words or the odd sentence, it isn't really a solution, as there are so many phrases which do not have a word for word translation into another language.
i don't want to end up with something which looks like a 'pidgin' language version which might put people off