This paper deals with the specific linguistic needs of companies that market products and services to professional buyers in export markets. The internationalisation of business and the high cost of house-call selling have made central production of advertising, marketing and technical literature the most cost-effective way to communicate with target groups which are small in numbers, but geographically and linguistically widespread. Mulitilingual business-to-business information makes special demands that affect all phases of production: text, artwork, layout, mechanical reproduction, and last but not least translation. The author argues that there is a growing need for a new breed of marketing-oriented translator capable of treating the source text as a copy platform for creative adaptation to inform and persuade professional buyers in a language they recognise and accept as their own.