Should The Quebec Language Police Fine Godaddy.com Because Of This Woman's Complaint?
The web-hosting site GoDaddy.com might be getting into trouble with the OQLF. Stephanie Guenette, a bilingual business owner chose GoDaddy to build and host her boutique's website and according to GoDaddy, their website templates are fully customizable. That is unless you're trying to make a French website.
While building her site, Stephanie tried to translate the "featured products" and "home" tabs to French, only to find out this wasn't possible. According to an article by the Journal de Montreal, GoDaddy apologized several times but didn't offer any solutions to the problem.
What bothers Stephanie is the fact that GoDaddy advertises in Quebec when they are clearly not prepared to operate here. According to article 52 of the French language charter, a company cannot operate in Quebec unless their catalogs, brochures, folders, commercial directories and any similar publications are drawn up in French. When she finally got a response other than "we're sorry", a customer service rep told Stephanie that it would be at least a year before they could translate her site.
So although GoDaddy is based in Arizona, they choose to do business in Quebec which means they are subject to the OQLF's rules and the language laws of Quebec. If GoDaddy does not offer a full translation of Stephanie's website (and other Quebec websites) and continues to practice in Quebec, do you think they should be facing fines?
