I am interested in manufacturing cherry microswitch arcade buttons
such as the ones in the listed links. But, I want to produce a line of
them that are translucent colors, rather than solid. I do not need to
manufacture the actual cherry microswitches, just the buttons.

How do I go about doing this? Is there an extremely high cost involved?

The first link for these pushbuttons is:
http://www.happcontrols.com/pushbuttons/5891xxl.htm

Here is an example of what I want to manufacture (but in more vibrant
translucent colors)
http://www.centsibleamusements.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=679

Lastly, here is an example of what kind of colors I'm looking for
(these are just the wrong type of switch):
http://www.centsibleamusements.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=412

Thanks!

I just read about this site in the paper over the weekend. apparently
they manufacture proto types, and you can download and use their cad
software on line for free:

http://www.emachineshop.com/

I think cmiller.ga is on the right track. It looks to me like this
part would be best made by injection molding:

http://www.emachineshop.com/machines-molding/injection-molding.htm

The cost is in the tooling - you are probably looking at thousands or
tends of thousands to make up the tooling required. It will almost
certainly be cheaper  to ask an existing manufacturer to do a special
run for you unless you are anticipating continuous production for
months on end (which must run to millions of the little things, but
they would cost peanuts each).

Prototyping will be less cost overall for a small number of units, but
a very high cost per unit.

Owain