Montreal, April 26, 2002
Localization: A Major Issue In Enhancing the Presence
of both Official Languages on the Internet
Presentation on the occasion of the Internal Symposium on Localization
Dr. Dyane Adam – Commissioner of Official Languages
Check against delivery
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am sure that I need not convince you today of the usefulness, for both private- and public-sector organizations, of creating products and services that are adapted to their clients' needs and expectations.
Instead, I want to speak to you about another classic tenet of marketing: that organizations must speak their clients' language, on the Internet as elsewhere.
Not a single modern-day professor of marketing would challenge the fact that it makes good business sense for organizations to speak their clients' language. No private-sector firm can hope to sell its products by advertising in all the Quebec media in English alone. Is there any substance to this often-repeated but no longer tested claim? There is indeed.
A recent study by Quebec's Conseil de la langue française provides indicators of how important it is to address clients in their own language.1 This study shows that most consumers prefer to use their first language rather than another language. Surveys indicate that most Quebec Francophones prefer to run errands, watch television, and read newspapers in French. This fact means that organizations that communicate in the language of their French-speaking clients will convey the message that they care about these clients and thus, to some extent, create an ''affinity.''
Research has also shown that, by using their target client group's first language learned in documentation, organizations help clients optimize processing of the information conveyed. For example, sales representatives who use their clients' first language are twice as likely to be properly understood than are representatives who use clients' second language.2
Using clients' language fosters not only understanding, but also recall of the message conveyed. A survey conducted in the United States showed that Hispano-Americans recalled an advertising message in Spanish one and one-half times better than a message in English.3 That survey made an important point: using Spanish makes good business sense not only with Hispano-Americans who have little knowledge of English, but also with Hispano-Americans who are completely bilingual.
Lastly, organizations that use their clients' language are more persuasive. For example, studies have shown that, on average, Hispano-Americans' opinion of a trade mark improves by more than 40% after they view the Spanish-language version of a commercial, but by less than 11% after they view the English-language version--regardless of whether the viewers are unilingual Spanish speakers or completely bilingual individuals.4
Thus there seem to be sound reasons, over and above the legal obligations, for organizations to communicate in their clients' language. That said, does a truism from the old economy still apply in the new, global economy? I say it does!
Statistics have already shown that behaviour in language matters is no different among Internet users. Firstly, they surf the Net in their own language. For example, according to a study conducted in 2000 by the Centre francophone de recherche en informatisation des organisations (CEFRIO), 59% of French-speaking Internet users in Quebec visit mainly French-language sites when using the Internet for personal reasons.5
Secondly, Internet users do business with organizations that speak their language. For example, Internet users appear to be three times as likely to make purchases from Internet suppliers that provide sites in their language than from other suppliers that communicate with them in another language.6
So, to summarize these observations, in the electronic universe as in the conventional marketplace, it makes good business sense to use the language of the target client group: it's that clear. Unfortunately, not all firms and organizations doing business in Canada realize this fact. Many of them still have not gotten around to making a French-language Internet site available to their French-speaking clients, or providing them with electronic services whose quality is as high as that of services provided for English-speaking clients.
So what? The upshot is that, at present, French-speaking Canadians do not have Internet access to all the on-line content they would like to consult. For example, according to Statistics Canada, all young English-speaking Internet users believe that there is enough English content on the Net, but only 59% of young French-speaking users feel that there is enough content in French.7
The fact that French-language content is not always up to par with demand goes a long way toward explaining why, in Canada, Francophones make less use of the Internet than do Anglophones. For example, only 44% of French-speaking Canadians now use the Internet, as compared with 58% of English-speaking Canadians.8
This gap is of the greatest concern to me, in that being less connected means being increasingly marginalized, less well informed and, as a result, less well off. As early as 1999, this concern led me to publish a study entitled The Government of Canada and French on the Internet, which included 12 recommendations aimed at increasing use of the Internet in French. Recently, this concern also led me to publish a new study on the same issue, entitled French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy.
In this second study, I presented three strategic initiatives aimed at allowing the Government of Canada to promote increased use of French on the Internet. I am sure you will find two of these initiatives of particular interest.
Above all, the government must promote the development of a critical mass of French-language Internet content. Reaching this goal will mean using at least two approaches.
Firstly, the federal government will have to intensify its efforts toward localization of the electronic content it produces in English. In theory, material that is to provide information and services for Canadians must be published on the Internet in both official languages; in practice, the situation is quite different. Federal departments and agencies post information in both languages on their Internet sites. Unfortunately, often the quality of the content translated by these institutions leaves something to be desired.
Clearly, inadequate financial resources for government translation efforts systematically hamper the localization of content into French. But there is more to the situation than that! At a time when demand for translation is growing by between 15% and 25% each year, the Translation Bureau is struggling to hire the professionals it needs.9
To find a way out of this crisis of supply, in French on the Internet I recommend that the Treasury Board Secretariat commit the budgetary resources necessary to allow federal departments and agencies to meet the increasing need for translation in response to the publication of content in both official languages on the Internet.10 I also recommend that the federal government, in co-operation with the provinces, find ways to support the training of more translators at Canadian universities.
As well, I recommend that the Treasury Board Secretariat take the appropriate steps to ensure that the content of federal Internet sites that have been localized into French is of high quality. Initiatives by the Treasury Board Secretariat could support the efforts of the Translation Bureau, which recently created a localization section responsible for ensuring that government sites respect the specific cultural and linguistic characteristics of both English and the French.11
Translation will be part of the solution to this problem of increasing the critical mass of French-language content on the Internet. But we will need to do more! In the federal government and elsewhere, French must not be reduced to a translation target language, with all the baggage that status carries with it. In other words, an increasing volume of Canadian content must be produced originally in French.
If it is to achieve this objective, the federal government must lead by example and ensure that federal entities design and produce more French-language content. There are three ways this objective could be achieved. Firstly and foremost, the federal government should encourage its French-speaking employees to exercise their right to work in French. Today, there is something wrong if the 27% of all public servants who are French-speaking do not produce, in French, even 20% of federal government documents.12
In addition, as I recommended in French on the Internet, the Treasury Board Secretariat should ensure, as part of the implementation of the Government On-Line initiative to deliver services electronically, that an equitable share of effort is devoted to producing content originally in French. To date, few efforts have been made to this end.13
Furthermore, Public Works and Government Services Canada should provide ongoing training to network and content managers of federal institutions' Internet sites, in order to increase their awareness of the issue of bilingualism and prepare them to solve the problems of managing bilingual sites.14
Lastly, as well as leading by example, the government should intensify its support for the creation of French-language Internet content by third parties. Federal programs to achieve this objective already exist. Unfortunately, not all of them are designed along the same lines as Telefilm Canada's Canada New Media Fund, under which a certain proportion of production and distribution budgets awarded to applicants must be allocated to French-language projects. I recommend further that the Department of Canadian Heritage ensure that all funding provided under Canada's digital content strategy be accompanied by reaffirmation of the principle of Canada's linguistic duality.15
These points constitute the first essential initiative in enhancing the presence of French on the Internet. The second initiative has to do with the need for Canada's foreign policy to take linguistic duality into account as a fundamental Canadian value.
At present, Canada's foreign policy does not always do this job. It is odd, for example, that Canada does not seem to encourage foreign embassies and consulates in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and other locations to develop Internet sites that operate in both English and French. Similarly, the Government of Canada should encourage the international organizations of which it is a member to provide equitable space for French on their Internet sites.
For example, the United States embassy's site in Paris is bilingual, but its site in Canada is almost entirely unilingual English; French-speaking visitors to the British High Commission's site in Ottawa are asked to visit, virtually, the British embassy in Paris to obtain the information they need in French; and the sites of the Organization of American States (OAS), the G8, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) display little French-language content.
To remedy this situation, I recommend that Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada immediately take appropriate action to ensure that foreign embassies in Canada, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations in which Canada is a participant provide equitable space for English and French on their Internet sites.16
Of course, each of these measures will benefit all French-speaking Canadians. That said, I believe that increased government support for bilingualism on the Internet and elsewhere can also benefit the 78,000 writing, translating, localizing, and public relations professionals in Canada17 and help them position themselves better internationally in a market that is not only fast-growing but increasingly indispensable economically.
This is not an exaggerated claim. Over the years, the United States has realized that money spent on something it cared about--national security--could have repercussions well beyond the military sector. There is no end to the number of products and services developed by or for the military--including the Internet--that now benefit that country's economy in particular and society in general.
Similarly, Canada must realize that efforts spent on something it cares about--promoting linguistic duality--can have significant economic repercussions. We must develop the French-language information highway in Canada and intensify our efforts to promote bilingualism, not just for political or legal reasons, but because we must, and because the future of Canada's knowledge-based economy is at stake.
Allow me, in closing, to share with you a story told a number of years ago by then United States President Ronald Reagan. One day, the White House organized a supper in honour of France's head of state François Mitterrand . According to protocol, President Reagan was to enter the dining room with Madame Mitterrand . Following the head steward, the couple were making their way among the tables, when suddenly Madame Mitterrand stiffened, turned around, and said a few words to her host in French. Seeing that the steward was signalling them to move forward, and speaking only English himself, President Reagan told Madame Mitterrand that their table was on the other side of the room and that they needed to keep moving. France's First Lady, however, did not move but repeated what she had just said. Fortunately, an interpreter arrived on the scene and explained to President Reagan that he was standing with both feet on Madame Mitterrand 's dress!
We can see that, in the 1980s, timely intervention by a member of your profession contributed to the preservation of the contemporary international order.
Along the same lines but on a more serious note, I like to think that, thanks to intervention by the Government of Canada and by yourselves, we shall never have cause--to paraphrase Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali's remarks at the Journée internationale de la Francophonie--to worry that some day French will not be very useful because it has failed to keep up with the times.
Thank you.
1 Roy, Réjean and Pierre Georgeault (2001), Enquête sur la langue des sites webs des sociétés grands publics actives au Québec, Québec, Conseil de la langue française, 72 p.
2 Roy and Georgeault (2001), p. 10.
3 Roslow, Peter and J. A. F. Nicholls (1996), ''Main Message Retention'', Marketing Research, volume 8, No. 1, p. 38 ff.
4 Roslow, Peter and J. A. F. Nicholls (1996), ''Targeting the Hispanic Market: Comparative Persuasion of TV Commercials in Spanish and English'', Journal of Advertising Research, May-June, p. 66-77.
5 See www.infometre.cefrio.qc.ca/loupe/omnibus/0300.asp (in French only).
6 Schwartz, Howard (2000), ''Going Global'', Webtechniques, September, http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2000/09/schwartz/.
7 Rotermann, Michelle, ''Wired Young Canadians'', Statistics Canada, Canadian Social Trends, Winter 2001, p. 4.
8 Dryburgh, Heather, Changing our Ways: Why and How Canadians use the Internet, p. 7.
9 Commissioner of Official Languages (2002), French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy, Ottawa, 2002, p. 19.
10 French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy, Recommendation 7.
11 French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy, Recommendation 8.
12 Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages (2002), French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy, p. 16.
13 French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy, Recommendation 5.
14 French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy, Recommendation 6.
15 French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy, Recommendation 4.
16 French on the Internet: Key to the Canadian Identity and the Knowledge Economy, Recommendation 17.
17 See www.jobfutures.ca/emploiavenir/cnp/512.html (link no longer active).
