just for the record/to start a debate, and to show that even standard translations of terms are less obvious when you look at them closely:

'Geschäftsführer' is a legally defined office under German law with clear rights and responsibilities: every GmbH must have at least one 'Geschäftsführer'. The corresponding UK term is 'director', which is also a legally defined office with defined rights and obligations. Every limited company must have at least one director, every public company at least two.

As far as I am aware, 'managing director' is not a legally defined term in the UK and a company certainly does not have to have a 'managing director' (nor is there a statutory shareholding requirement, btw). It is therefore not an exact equivalent for 'Geschäftsführer' and, as ever, the question of how to translate the latter depends on the context.

It is traditional in the UK for the head of the board of directors to be called the 'managing director' (US: CEO) and if a German company has one guy occupying a similar position, it seems absolutely right to call him the 'managing director' as well.

More than one managing director, while originally a US practice, is also not uncommon, and there's no reason why a GmbH with two 'Geschäftsführer' should not be said to have two 'managing directors'.

But eight is a different matter. If we are talking about 'managing director' as simply an internal distinction as in eg many investment banks and so on which may have dozens of them, then fair enough. But no limited company would actually have eight 'managing directors' on the board: the 'managing director' is the guy in charge and you can't have everyone in charge. There would actually be eight directors, one of whom is the managing director. A German company with eight Geschäftsführer, therefore, cannot sensibly be said to have eight 'managing directors': they should be called 'directors'.

Having said that, 'managing director' may be so entrenched that they object to being called anything else and may want to be called that for status reasons. But if we are talking about the legal structure and officers of the company, then I think it would be wrong to describe a German GmbH as having eight 'managing directors'.

This is all based on the UK, US may have a different take.

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Note added at 1 day2 mins (2006-09-23 07:11:47 GMT)
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@ Camilla: what is your context? You say 'of a GmbH' but GmbHs do not have a Vorstand (Aktiengesellschaft) nor do they have persönlich haftende Gesellschafter (Personengesellschaften). 'Vertretungsberechtigte' can include Prokuristen.