When it comes to B2C marketing, social media is often the top priority. It’s about reaching out to new clients and updating existing customers on your company’s offerings. Knowing your target audience is essential, and so is crafting your message to reach them, so you’ve got to look at the numbers to see where to invest your time and money. And if you’re going to do that, you want your message to get to your intended demographic. In most cases, this means using SEO, appropriate channels, and fine-tuned messaging, but it also comes down to language. True, only 22% of Canadians speak exclusively French, so it might not be appealing to invest the resources to translate all your creative content, but you might need to.
The Charte de la langue française stipulates that all commercial publications disseminated by a company about products or services intended for the Quebec market must be in French. This includes social media. Moreover, this goes beyond text posts; this includes videos, captions, texts inserted into images and any other content, whether permanent or temporary. All this must equally exist in French. Companies must also ensure that the content they share on their social media accounts is in French, even if it comes from a third party. This responsibility lies with the person making the content available to the public.
Some social media platforms have the frontend option to “show translation” if users see posts in a language different from the one they have set in their preferences. This might seem like a simple solution to a unilingual marketer, but anyone who’s clicked that button knows the embedded AI translation software is… hit and miss. As a translator, I often get a laugh out of what gets produced, but it’s less funny to a marketer if it’s distorting your carefully crafted message. Don’t get me wrong, there is some good translation software out there, but at the very least, you still need a human translator to do post-machine editing and make sure it makes sense.
That said, the visual and creative aspect of social media marketing is an essential part of the communication strategy, and you don’t want to make it too text-heavy by having English and French in every piece of content. While this could compromise the aesthetic, it’s also unappealing to post everything twice, once in English and once in French, because duplicating every post can annoy followers.
Furthermore, the Charte states that if publications are also distributed in a language other than French, the French version must also be accessible under “at least as favourable conditions”. This means that consumers should not have to make additional effort to access the French version of publications. If the settings do have to be changed, then the French version is not accessible under conditions that are as favourable as the English.
To circumvent this, a company may have two versions of the same social media account: an English version and a French of the same social media account. In this case, the company must ensure that any content published on the English account is simultaneously published in French on the French account. While this eliminates the aesthetics and duplication issues on the customer’s end, it doubles the number of social media accounts your marketing department needs to manage. Instead, I prefer localization on platforms that allow it. That way, customers see your content in their preferred language, and your message stays clear. But that’s a topic for another post; here, I just want to express the importance of bilingual social media content for companies operating in Quebec.
If you have questions about marketing translation, post-machine editing, localization, or help understanding the contents of the Charte, reach out, and I can help with consultations, revisions, and translations.
*Please note this post is not intended as legal advice, but a translation and explanation of sections of the Charte de la langue française and the Guide aux médias sociaux.
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