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There are no shortcuts to getting quality links, that's what makes them so valuable. Some ways you can acquire quality links include: Writing guest blogs for the top blogs in your niche Holding giveaways & contests to attract links Creating amazing, shareable content Being newsworthy and getting coverage from newspapers and blogs Making donations to high authority organizations, charities, and student groups If you  need more ideas, here's a great list: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

Is there a subdomain for each language? Is there a "default" language that exists on the primary domain (i.e. English on www.yourwebsite.com)? Are you using rel href lang, X-Default Hrefe Lang, rel canonical, or other "tags" or solutions for this at the moment? If you could share the website address we wouldn't have to ask these questions, by the way. I know that is especially tough on client sites, but I just wanted to say that Dave has asked some vital questions, including the one about setting each subdomain as its own language / geographic target audience. Here is what he is asking about: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399 It is not necessary to have completely unique content for each language, as someone suggested below.

Those are the keywords we push in our google ppc and blogs but in terms of ranking we are still low - but then I guess this is where we have to put in the leg work and just keep putting relevant, quality content out there.