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Quebec Language Police Target Store Owner's Facebook Page
New submitter wassomeyob writes "In Canada, the province of Quebec has their Official Language Act of 1974 (aka Bill 22) which makes French their sole official language. It has famously been used to force business owners to modify signage to give French pre-eminance over other languages. Now, the Quebec language police seem to be extending their reach to Facebook. Eva Cooper owns Delilah in the Parc — a shop in Chelsea, Quebec near the Quebec/Ontario border. She received a letter from the language office telling her to translate everything posted on her store's Facebook page into French."
Ok, its a stupid law, and I'm not going to defend it.
But if the Quebec based store is maintaining a website, it needs to have a french translation, and a company's facebook page is little different than a geocities site from 1998, and is just another form of advertising for the company so this is entirely consistent with how the law has been enforced in the past.
I live in Québec and because of those law I can't purchase product from the local store because the box is not en French. It happend to me last year where I purchase some headphone (nothing fancy there were even NO paper in the box to explain how to plug it). But since the box wasn't available in French, Best-buy would not have the product, online I could see it but they would refuse to sell it to me if my address was in Québec. So I've went to competitor in Vancouver that is not affected by Québec law and purchase it. Result? The law has remove a sale from my local store and move that else where.
In the late 90s, I worked at an internet software company in Quebec - we developed software for servers and sold it over the internet. No boxed copies, but your standard suite of services - a knowledge base, online documentation, phone and email access to sales and support staff, all of which was based in the province of Quebec.
Eventually, we got big enough to be noticed by the Quebec language police. They sent a letter, and then there were phone calls. They provided us with a list of requirements - you must answer your phones in French first, your web site must have all content that is available in English available in French as well, and so on.
We started costing out the implications of this, especially the confusion of the majority of our international (as in, American) clients. Then someone asked the important question - what happens if we don't comply?
"Well, you won't be allowed to sell to anyone in Quebec!" came the indignant response.
From then on, I took so much pleasure in informing the our small number of Quebec government clients that no, they would no longer be able to buy upgrades, tech support contracts, or anything else. The 98% of our out-of-province sales were unaffected.
Unfortunately, it sounds like Eva runs a brick-and-mortar store, so will need to comply or face actual fines.
Why not translate it into a useful language, like Klingon?
Who did what now?
Similarly, I am very offended when I call a bank or any other local business and the first thin I am asked is if I speak Spanish, to press '9'.
Now, I also recognize that "speaking English" is not a strict definition. Many natives don't do that very well.
I'm a born and raised anglophone Quebecker. This is an issue I've faced (yes, faced) my whole life. There is a great deal of prejudice and discrimination against anglophones in Quebec, both socially and legislatively. Two applicants to the same job, both perfectly bilingual, one Francophone, one Anglophone, most times the Francophone gets the job. I've had people pick fights with me in bars, because I was speaking English with my friends privately. If you didn't attend English school as a child, you can't send your children to English school. I've gotten attitude from merchants for using the wrong conjugation or gender. The language issues touch every aspect of life here and truly divides Quebec. I've been against these discriminatory laws my whole life. In spite of all this, recently, after the last federal election, I'm starting to get it. Quebec is different than other provinces. The things we care about are different than the general population of North America. We believe in free health care and education for all. Not as a concept, but to the core of our being. It's ironic that we care so much for everyone, but lose sight of it over something as trivial as language. Francophone Quebec is afraid that we're going to lose these differences, this identity by way of dilution of the language. This is where the animosity comes from. It's rooted in fear, not in hatred. The fear of losing the language is justified and real. French is fading and being mixed against the cultural influence of English media. In 50 years, it will be the second language in Quebec. The fact is, today it's a French province with clear laws that signage and publicity must be in French first, and in English second. This said, the language police are overly aggressive and make silly moves like this pretty often.. and unfortunately it undermines Quebec and the social issues it faces. It makes us seem silly and petty to the rest of the world. If you live here, after things like this you have a harsh taste in your throat once you're done rolling your eyes. It is getting better. The next generation understands the world better than the previous generation, and things continue to improve.
shut the fuck up asshole. we all know english people won't make any efforts to learn french even if the live in france directly.
I am Canadian, I live in Ontario, I am an anglophone, and I went to french immersion school for 4 years, with about 90 other students in my class, and studied with Rosetta Stone for two, but I live in an almost exclusively english area.
I can read french pretty well, but I can't really speak it well due to lack of practice. So anyways, english people do make efforts to learn french. It's usually the French people who put us off of it with attitudes like yours.
nope. USA is a country. England is not. The country is "The United Kingdom" of which England is one part.
Well, that comes as a big surprise to those of us who were born in one of the countries that comprise the United Kingdom. All this time we believed that Wales, England, and Scotland were each separate countries, with unique cultures and languages that were just part of the UK. Maybe history and having separate laws and legislative systems got us poor little souls confused.
How lucky we are to have such experts on the InterWebz who can set us straight.
Its important to a small zealot minority. I'm also french Canadian and have lived there most of my life. There's a couple of people who are impossibly vocal about it. The rest don't care or even dread it. They do a heck of a lot more than give slaps on the wrists, with daily fines and penalties, forcing companies to have "councils" that oversee usage of the language, etc.
The only reason stuff like Best Buy is still Best Buy, is because you can negotiate. I worked for a very large international company that opened an office in Montreal. They couldn't realistically comply with all the laws, so they were making deals: one of the deal was to have everyone, including english-only speakers, have only access to french computers/operating systems/keyboards and not be allowed to change them.
Yeah, that was a pain.
I worked for another that was almost exclusively english speakers. We were still forced to translate all our reports in french, including the one offs that were only read by a single specific executive who didn't even know french.
In the end, it hurts competitiveness on a global level. There's a reason salaries are so much lower in Montreal than in other large Canadian cities. The cost of doing business is just insane. So I left.