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I have launched a product in 2 countries where I know the language and can answer customer requests easily. Now I want to launch in many more countries (Eastern Europe) where there are lots of different languages and it would take me a while to train customer service in each market.

I would rather go via a route of translating customer requests as they come in - and if market takes off - employ a support person.

Would you recommend that? If yes - is there any service that would allow me to get instant (or 1-4 hour) translations with seamless API / convenient payment method that takes into account translating short snippets of texts rather than large documents with long turn around time?

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If you don't need to reply to the customer you could try some of the automated solutions like Babelfish or Google Translate. These services are free and would give you some idea of what the customer is asking for. I would never use them to draft a response as machine-generated translations can sound hilariously bad to a native speaker.

Another option to consider is Amazon Mechanical Turk which uses humans and has an API. I am not sure what their turnaround time is for a translation request but you should be able to run a few tests to get an idea.

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THanks. I need human translation - thanks for M Turk tip - while I cannot use it because I am out of US - I can use crowdflower - which I am just trialing for some languages. we will see how this goes – Janusz May 22 '10 at 20:23
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Wow. Just for your information. I tested Crowdflower for German and Hungarian translation and got 2 different translations for each language in 1 hour. – Janusz May 23 '10 at 13:06
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there are new crowdsourced translation companies doing this. Good ones offer an API so you can automate the process. Some of them are even able to provide turnaround guarantees. If you are looking for fast translations, http://www.speaklike.com offers with 37 languages the most language combinations. There is also a speed guarantee and API available.

hope this helps. Martin

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