With the worldwide reach of the web, it’s no longer uncommon for foreign entities to learn about your business. In fact, some of them might find your offering unique and unavailable from where they are. As such, it’s a likely possibility that you’ll get foreign language inquiries every now and again.
Most foreign groups who contact you will likely try to manage the communication in their own version of English. However painful that might be to read, it’s way better than the alternative – like an email inquiry in Chinese, for instance.
If you have a capable professional translator on tap, getting inquiries in foreign language would be no problem. Just send the email their way and have them translate it for you. However, are you really going to have translators for all possible languages on board?
A more feasible solution, and one that I’ve seen used by many organizations, is to employ a language translation software to get a good idea of what the inquiry is about. With the high-level quality translations many modern applications are capable of, you probably wouldn’t need to use a professional to take a second-look at it.
When answering the inquiries, it’s usually fine to respond in English. They understood your English web site well enough, so they’ll probably get what you mean when you respond. If you consistently get a number of inquiries in one language, it should be time to hire someone to create a standard FAQ in that vernacular, so you can send it along with your response.
Once the brief exchanges turn into something serious, realize that you may need the expertise of a professional translator, so look towards a hiring a capable consultant for that.