Most non-Quebec Canadian vendor websites either skip French entirely or ship a Google-translated parallel that reads like nonsense to a francophone evaluator. We build real EN/FR parallels with native French-Canadian copy, hreflang annotations, and matching information architecture — the level of bilingual posture federal procurement actually expects.
Many federal RFPs are designated bilingual — meaning evaluators include francophone reviewers, all materials are reviewed in both languages, and your corporate web posture is expected to support either evaluator. Even on EN-designated files, a credible French parallel signals seriousness about the federal market.
The Official Languages Act and the related Treasury Board policies set the expectation. The market reality is that vendors with weak French parallels lose technical-evaluation points on bilingual files, and lose pre-RFI consideration when the relationship-building phase happens at NCR networking events conducted bilingually.
**Native French-Canadian copy** — written, not translated. Quebec French and France French differ; federal procurement reviewers are predominantly Quebec or NCR-Outaouais francophones.
**Matching information architecture** — every EN page has a FR equivalent under /fr/, with the same content depth and structure. Stub pages signal unseriousness.
**Hreflang annotations** — proper rel='alternate' hreflang='en-CA' and 'fr-CA' tags so Google serves the right version.
**Language toggle visible on every page** — and the toggle takes the user to the equivalent page in the other language, not the homepage.
**Lang attribute correctness** — pages declared in the right base language, with mid-page lang shifts annotated.
**French metadata** — meta titles, descriptions, OG tags, and JSON-LD all localized.
Full FR parallel for the corporate site (about, services, capability statement, past performance, team, contact, accessibility statement), with native FR-CA copy by Quebec or NCR-Outaouais writers, hreflang setup, language-toggle component, FR metadata, FR JSON-LD, and ongoing FR content parity. We also build an FR maintenance retainer so EN content additions don't drift the parity over time.
1. Machine-translated FR copy with grammatical errors a francophone evaluator notices in 5 seconds. 2. EN-only PDFs (capability statements, brochures) — every public-facing PDF needs the FR equivalent. 3. Hreflang missing or incorrect — Google then serves the wrong version, evaluators get the wrong impression. 4. FR pages that 404 because the slug structure isn't symmetric. 5. FR navigation that has fewer items than EN — the FR side becomes obviously second-tier. 6. Forms that submit in EN only or send confirmation emails in EN only.
Yes — federal contracts are evaluated by NCR-based reviewers who are often francophone, and many files are designated bilingual regardless of geographic delivery.
CAD $18,000 - $55,000 for a 30-50 page corporate site, including native FR-CA copywriting.
Translation is fine for stable, factual content (legal notices, service descriptions). Translation is not fine for marketing copy, value propositions, and case-study narratives — those need to be re-written in FR.
We run an FR-parity check monthly and ship FR content updates within 5 business days of any EN addition.