It is a little amazing how less people in the US know about things outside the US.

I run a travel website in Brazil in six different languages with nearly the same content in every language. Of course it is not duplicate content in the sense of search engine punishment. For a person who doesn't speak all these different languages every page is a unique content. You can visit my landing page here:
http://www.hotellagoaemar.com.br

I don't use different URLs for each language page. The URL of the landing page has an extension for every language, like:
/ingles.htm for English,
/alemao.htm for German,
and so on.

And all language pages rank in Google and Yahoo between #1 and #6 in their corresponding language results for the keywords 'hotel salvador bahia'.