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Hello John, Thanks again for your help – it is much clearer now. We don't want to trick our users, but we do want them to use the piece of content we have created without being overwhelmed by the brand. What we're probably going to so is host the content on our corporate URL but create a whole new design – much less branded  – for that content.

Take a look at this video from Matt Cutts outlining their position on translated content. In addition, as to the question of canonical element and hreflang you'll see that Google removed this portion from their guidelines with an update saying 'to simplify implementation, we no longer recommend using rel=canonical.' Check out the piece for the current position. I also had advice direct from Christopher Semturs from Google who said directly to me "the golden rule I personally recommend to everybody using hreflang: In doubt, don't use rel-canonical."