Using translation skills to barter for links?

[Makaveli2007]

Ive had this idea before more than once, but because a friend made a comment about it, that hed give me a link if I did that, it made me think about it again:

Is there any chance that I could use the fact that I can speak German and French (German is my mother tongue, btw) to my advantage to try to barter for links?

Obviously I dont want to translate thousands of pages for 1 link that sucks, but maybe offering to translate the most popular sections of some of the hub-sites in my niche into German/French could help me get some good links (that send traffic)?

I'm willing to believe it can be a win/win situation, because high authority sites could probably leverage their link authority to draw in decent amounts of traffic automatically if they have a German/French version of their (most popular section(s) of their) website.

However, maybe it would not help them at all, unless they're monetizing through ads (hard to sell to someone who doesnt speak your language)? Maybe, I should find sites that already have babel fish (attempts at a) translation and/or translations into other languages?

[JonRhodesUK]

You have the advantage that you can use your language skills to create relationships with more webmasters than your competitors - be it joint ventures, link exchanges etc. Even with my extremely shaky French skills I have managed to procure the odd French link in the past! This is probably your real advantage over your competition. I know if I had good language skills I would be visiting foreign sites for link building opportunities in particular.

It may or may not be worth translating some of your pages - Google seems to do a reasonable job of automatically translating web pages. It could be worth testing with a few of your most popular/important pages, and getting some feedback.

[edited by: JonRhodesUK at 6:59 am (utc) on June 8, 2009]