English to French Translation
English to French translation splits before it starts: France French or Canadian French. The difference is not only vocabulary. Quebec attaches legal obligations to the French version of commercial and employment documents, which makes the variant choice a compliance decision rather than a stylistic one.
France French or Canadian French?
Choose by where the document is used, not by which is cheaper to source. France French and Quebec French diverge in terminology, in anglicism tolerance and in the legal lexicon. Quebec resists borrowed English terms that French usage in France accepts, so a France-sourced text often reads as careless in Montreal.
Everyday examples run in the opposite direction from what people expect: Quebec says courriel where France says e-mail, and stationnement where France says parking. Quebec French is the more conservative variety in loanword terms, because language policy there actively supplies French equivalents.
For a product sold in both markets, budget two versions of anything customer-facing. Internal technical documentation can usually run on one version, since the terminology that matters is standardised by the industry rather than by the country.
What does Quebec's Bill 96 require in practice?
Quebec's Charter of the French Language, as amended by Bill 96 in 2022, expanded the obligation to provide French versions of commercial contracts, employment documents and customer-facing material, and requires a certified French translation to accompany English court pleadings filed by companies.
The practical effect is that French stops being an optional market version and becomes part of how a document is validly issued. Adhesion contracts, employment agreements and workplace policies are the usual pressure points for companies expanding into Quebec.
We are a translation provider, not a law firm, so the workflow we recommend is simple: have your Quebec counsel identify which documents fall inside the obligation, and we produce the French versions to the standard of translation the filing or the contract calls for.
Why do French typography rules matter to a translation?
French punctuation is spaced differently from English. A non-breaking space goes before a semicolon, colon, exclamation and question mark, quotations use guillemets, and capitals follow different rules in titles. Getting these wrong is the fastest way to make a translated page look machine-produced.
- Guillemets « like this » rather than English quotation marks
- Non-breaking thin space before ; : ! ? and inside guillemets
- Decimal comma and space as a thousands separator
- Sentence-style capitalisation in headings, not title case
When is a sworn French translation needed?
In France, official filings usually require a traducteur assermenté — a translator sworn before a court of appeal. Quebec works through certified translators accredited by its professional order. The two regimes are not interchangeable, so the destination decides who can sign the work.
Frequently asked questions
Can one French version serve both France and Canada?
For internal or purely technical material, usually yes. For anything a customer, employee or regulator reads, no — the terminology and the legal vocabulary differ enough to be noticed, and in Quebec the French version can carry legal weight.
Do you handle French for African markets?
Yes. French in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire or Morocco follows France French conventions closely in written form, so we use fr-FR as the base and localise terminology where the local administrative system differs.
Is a translated contract binding in Quebec?
That is a legal question for your counsel, and it depends on the document type. Our part is to produce a French version accurate enough to be relied on, and to flag where a certified translation rather than a standard one is being asked for.
Need English to French translation?
Tell us France or Canada and what the document is for. We quote from the file.
Request a quote