FlyingWith
Travel platformA content-rich travel platform that organizes planning around who or what the traveller is flying with.
- Product UX
- Editorial
- Web app
Bilingual EN / FR · Service en français
Bilingual websites for Québec, built properly in French and English.
In Montréal, a bilingual website is not a feature. It is the baseline. Customers expect to read and buy in their language, search engines need to know which page serves which language, and Québec’s Charter of the French Language expects French to be available on commercial websites.
A translation plugin bolted onto an English site rarely gets this right. We plan both languages from the start: separate, crawlable URLs, language-specific titles and descriptions, and French copy written for Québec readers, not machine-translated from English.
Typical bilingual mistakes
Automatic translation
Machine translation produces awkward, sometimes wrong French. Québec customers notice immediately, and it erodes trust.
One URL, two languages
Switching language with JavaScript on the same URL means search engines may only ever see one version.
Missing hreflang
Without hreflang annotations, Google can show the English page to French searchers, or treat the two versions as duplicates.
Half-translated sites
Translated pages with English buttons, error messages, emails or legal pages break the experience at the moment it matters most.
How we build bilingual sites
Language architecture
URL structure, language switcher behaviour and which pages exist in each language — decided up front.
Content in both languages
Page-by-page copy for English and Québec French, including titles, descriptions, forms, errors and confirmation emails.
Technical implementation
hreflang (en-CA, fr-CA, x-default), canonical URLs, language attributes and a bilingual sitemap.
Bilingual QA
Every page, form and email is tested in both languages, including accented characters in emails — a common source of garbled text.
What is included
- Separate EN / FR URLs with a language switcher that keeps your place
- hreflang and canonical tags on every page
- Québec French copywriting or editing of your translations
- Bilingual forms, validation messages and emails
- Bilingual schema and Open Graph metadata
- UTF-8 safe emails (é, è, à, ç display correctly)
Live bilingual work
FlyingWith runs separate English and French versions; Landscaping Montreal serves a bilingual local market. This site is built the same way: switch languages at the top of the page.
Landscaping Montreal
Local servicesA service-led experience for landscaping and outdoor work across Greater Montréal, built to turn local search into qualified inquiries.
- Lead gen
- Bilingual
- Local search
Questions
Do I legally need a French website in Québec?
Québec’s Charter of the French Language generally requires commercial information, including on websites, to be available in French. Rules have exceptions and changed with Bill 96, so confirm your specific situation with a qualified advisor. We build sites that make full French availability straightforward.
Can you translate my existing content?
We can write or edit the French for your site, or work with your own translator. Either way, everything is reviewed in context on the page before launch.
Should French and English have different URLs?
Yes. Separate URLs (for example /fr/…) let search engines index each language and let you share a link in the right language.
Which language should be the default?
It depends on your customers. We set the default and the x-default hreflang based on your audience, and the switcher always lets visitors choose.
Check how your site handles both languages.
The free audit flags technical SEO issues; ask for the full review and we will include a bilingual check.
Start a project
Tell us what you need. We’ll make the next step clear.
Share the essentials. We reply within 24 business hours with a practical next step — not a canned sales sequence.
We reply within 24h
Prefer email?
info@mediamtl.com
Project brief
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