French Translation for US Companies Selling in Canada
An American brand that ships to Canada sells to a market where roughly one customer in four speaks French at home, and where one province, Quebec, has a language law with inspectors, complaint procedures and fines. Most US companies find this out after their first Quebec order, their first OQLF letter, or their first Canadian distributor asking for French labels.
Frenchside exists for this situation. We are a Montréal translation agency, founded in 2013, staffed by certified Canadian French translators, and we have helped US retailers, e-commerce brands, software companies, manufacturers and franchisors enter Canada without learning Quebec law the hard way. This page sets out what applies to you, in what order, and how we handle it from Montréal while you stay in Chicago, Austin or Seattle.
Free quote in 30 minutes
Translation agency specialized in French and English
Certified translators, members of the Association of OTTIAQ, ATIO, ATIA, STIBC, ATIM…
Serving Canadian and US businesses and institutions since 2014
The Two Sets Of Rules That Concern a US Seller
American companies tend to assume that Canada’s language requirements are a Quebec matter. Half of that is true.
- Federal rules apply everywhere in Canada. Under the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act and its regulations, most prepackaged consumer products sold anywhere in the country must carry mandatory label information in both English and French: the product identity, the net quantity, and the dealer’s name and address. Food, cosmetics, natural health products, drugs and medical devices have their own bilingual requirements under Health Canada rules. A shipment held at the border for an English-only label is a federal problem, not a Quebec one.
- Quebec’s Charter of the French language, strengthened by Bill 96, applies to anyone doing business in Quebec. The Charter does not ask where your company is incorporated. If you sell to Quebec customers, employ people in Quebec, advertise to Quebecers or operate a store, a website or an app that serves them, French obligations follow. The main ones for a US seller are the product, the website, the contract, customer service and, once you have 25 employees in the province, francization of the workplace.
We cover the Quebec rules in depth in our Bill 96 compliance translation service and in the Bill 96 guide for Quebec businesses. The rest of this page follows a typical US entry into the Canadian market, touchpoint by touchpoint.
Your Product and Its Packaging
Everything printed on a product sold in Quebec must be in French: label, packaging, instructions, warranty card, inserts. Another language may appear, but the French must be at least as prominent. Since June 1, 2025, the exemption that once allowed a registered English trademark to stand alone has narrowed: generic or descriptive words inside a trademark (“whitening”, “ultra soft”, “family size”) must now appear in French on the packaging as well.
For a US brand this usually means a Canadian packaging variant rather than a sticker. Our packaging and label translation team works with your packaging designer’s files directly, manages the text expansion that French creates (count on 15 to 25 percent more characters), and checks the result against both the federal bilingual requirements and Quebec’s rules. Food and beverage brands will find the Quebec specifics in our French labelling guide for food products.
You Website, Your App and Your Listings
If your site sells to Quebec, it must be available in French, and the French version must be of equal quality and as easy to find as the English. Product descriptions, checkout, order confirmations, shipping policies, return policies, account emails and the chatbot are all included. Social media accounts and paid ads aimed at Quebec follow the same logic.
We translate storefronts on Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, either through the platform’s native language tools or through a CMS export that we return ready to import. The e-commerce translation page explains the workflow; for software products, the SaaS and software localization page does the same for user interfaces, help centres and onboarding flows.
A note on machine translation, since almost every US e-commerce team asks: an app that auto-translates your store into French is not, on its own, a compliance measure. Unreviewed engine output produces European French, mistranslated policies and inconsistent product names, all of which a Quebec customer notices and any of which can ground a complaint. We review and correct machine output as a distinct service, described on our AI translation review page, and we will tell you when it makes sense and when it does not.
Your Contracts And Terms
Quebec law treats standard-form contracts (terms of sale, subscription agreements, warranties, end-user licences, franchise agreements) as contracts of adhesion. Since June 2023, a Quebec customer must be given the French version before they can validly choose to sign the English one. A checkbox that says “I accept the terms” linking only to English terms does not satisfy the rule.
Our legal translators translate terms of sale, privacy policies, warranties and distribution agreements into French that reflects Quebec civil law rather than French law, which is a distinction that matters in front of a Quebec court. See French legal translation and our note on Canadian French versus Quebec French in contract translation.
Your Customer Service
A Quebec consumer has the right to be served in French. For an online business, that means French support emails, French help articles, a French option in chat and, if you offer phone support, French-speaking agents or a partner who provides them. We translate help centres, canned responses, chatbot scripts and IVR menus, and several of our US clients route French tickets to a bilingual agent we helped them recruit through our HR translation practice.
Your Quebec Employees
The moment you have 25 or more employees in Quebec, your company must register with the Office québécois de la langue française and go through francization, a program that leads to a certificate confirming French is the normal language of work. Employment contracts, offer letters, policies, training materials and internal software all come under review. Companies with fewer employees still owe their Quebec staff French versions of employment documents. Our francization translation services page describes the program, and our guides on translating a job offer for Quebec and employment contract translation cover the two documents everyone starts with.
What Happens If You Wait?
The OQLF acts mainly on complaints, and complaints in Quebec come from customers, competitors and former employees. A complaint leads to a letter, a deadline to comply, and, if ignored, fines that for a company start at $3,000 and rise to $30,000 for a first offence, doubling and tripling for repeat offences, each day of non-compliance counting as a separate offence. The Office can also seek to have a product withdrawn from sale. Our guides on responding to an OQLF complaint and preparing for an OQLF inspection walk through both procedures.
In our experience the reputational cost arrives first. Quebec media report on English-only brands with some enthusiasm, and a screenshot of an untranslated checkout travels quickly. Translating before launch costs less than translating after a complaint, and considerably less than translating after a news story.
How We Work With a Company Based In The United States
Our clients in the US rarely visit Montreal, and they do not need to.
- We work in your time zone. Montreal is on Eastern time; our project managers are reachable from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern and we schedule around Pacific clients when needed.
- We invoice in US dollars if you prefer, accept ACH and card payments, and provide a W-8BEN-E form for your accounts payable on request. Prices are set out on our rates page in Canadian dollars; we convert at the day’s rate on the invoice.
- We sign your NDA, or provide ours. Files are stored on Canadian servers and handled by named, certified translators.
- We work in your tools. Shopify, Contentful, WordPress, Figma, Zendesk, GitHub, Crowdin, Phrase and Lokalise are all part of our weekly routine, and we return files in the format we received them.
- We start with an inventory. Before quoting, we list every customer-facing and employee-facing asset that will need French, assign it a priority based on legal exposure and launch sequence, and give you a fixed price by phase. Most US companies entering Canada spend between $8,000 and $40,000 on the first phase, then a smaller recurring budget for new products and updates.
Why Frenchside Translation Company?
Since 2013, Frenchside has been the reference for French translation in Canada. We have supported more than 1,200 organizations, including law firms, financial institutions, manufacturers and public bodies, and our client list includes Sun Life, Allianz, Dexcom, the National Film Board of Canada and the Canadian Cancer Society. Every translator on our team is certified by OTTIAQ, ATIO or another Canadian provincial body, and every translation is revised by a second translator before delivery. Frenchside is a member of the Canadian Language Industry Association (CLIA) and of the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA).
Our founder, Benjamin Beaudor, is a professional translator who has advised US and Canadian companies on Quebec language requirements for over a decade, publishes the “Doing Business in French” newsletter on LinkedIn, and personally reviews the compliance inventory for every new US client. The team and accreditations pages give the full picture; the case studies show what a Canadian launch looks like in practice.
Start With a Free Inventory
Send us your website URL, a sample of your packaging and your standard terms through the quote form, or write to [email protected]. Within two business days you will receive a document-by-document inventory of what needs French, the legal basis for each item, and a fixed price for each phase. There is no charge for the inventory and no obligation to proceed.