Multiple Copies of Site / Multiple Languages

Recopying your site into other languages

[brotherhood of LAN]

I have 600MB of space to play with, and I was thinking about translating my site into Spanish, though this will not be easy with the terminology involved

Moreover, providing a full copy of my site in another language and linking the two on the home page, would that do any harm / penalise me? After all the content would be identical its just the language used would be different

Can anyone provide more info in this area? Methods of translating quick, accurately and cheaply are also welcome!

[heini]

Translating your site to Spanish might be a very good idea in the first place, Spanish is with approx. 35 Mill. one of the most used languages online.

A cheap method to do this?
DIY. Else find a translator. There's no way around it. Don't even think about automated translation - it does not work.

Linking: I don't see a problem with SEs thinking it's duplicated content.
So I would recommend a deeper targeted crosslinking. It's the same basic process as when linking any two sites together.
That said it's clear both sites need incoming links from different sources.