SEO Architecture and Duplicate Content

[ahumanbeinghuman]

We are currently making a lot of changes to our site and we want to maintain best practices, which has led me to a couple of questions, I cannot seem to find clear answers for.

First, we are changing architecture and so page names are changing. I am using the permanent redirect in the .htaccess file - is this okay or will we be penalized for using the redirect?

Second, we have multiple domain names, but no sites to go with them, if we use the permanent redirect with different domain names (same as with pages) and redirect to our main domain - will this be considered spam and will we be penalized?

Lastly, I want to add smaller versions of our site in different languages under the main domain. For example "ourdomain.com/spanish/..." there would be duplicate content, but it will be in a foriegn language. Would this be duplicate content and or what should we do to not get penalized for it? Also, would it be better to use spanish.ourdomain.com or ourdomain.com/spanish?

Thanks for any help