Quebec Language Police Target Store Owner's Facebook Page 506
New submitter wassomeyob writes "In Canada, the province of Quebec has their Official Language Act of 1974 (aka Bill 22) which makes French their sole official language. It has famously been used to force business owners to modify signage to give French pre-eminance over other languages. Now, the Quebec language police seem to be extending their reach to Facebook. Eva Cooper owns Delilah in the Parc — a shop in Chelsea, Quebec near the Quebec/Ontario border. She received a letter from the language office telling her to translate everything posted on her store's Facebook page into French."
Well, see, the problem occurred in 1974. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Language Police"
Anything after that is kind of irrelevant.
Je me souviens (Score:2)
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Ha!
My wife and I spent a week in Quebec last summer, and I looked everywhere for a souvenir shot glass that said "Je ne me souviens pas" ("I don't remember") but I never found one.
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No, language police is exactly correct, and 1974 is when it happened.
Quebec has been reduced to a bunch of whining, bitching idiots who believe it should be their right to suppress the rights of others based on their language or religion.
We've all had official bilingualism rammed down our throats for several decades.
That you can't realize that the rest of the French speaking world thinks you sound like a bunch of illiterate tools is your problem.
Official bilingualism in Canada has resulted in the people of
much ado about nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, its a stupid law, and I'm not going to defend it.
But if the Quebec based store is maintaining a website, it needs to have a french translation, and a company's facebook page is little different than a geocities site from 1998, and is just another form of advertising for the company so this is entirely consistent with how the law has been enforced in the past.
Re:much ado about nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Should it really, though? If you run a store on a border town, where the majority don't actually speak french, should some demi-nationalists be able to dictate your areas culture?
It'd be like the rest of Canada forcing the Quebecois to have English everywhere.
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That would actually make more sense, as French-speaking Canadians are five times more likely to know English than English-speaking Canadians are to know French. Outside of Quebec, there's only about half a million native French speakers in Canada and even within Quebec, half of the French-speaking population knows English.
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I would like to know where you are getting your statistics.
half of the French-speaking population knows English.
I would think that ratio would be much higher considering almost all the rest of North America is English
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...almost all the rest of North America is English
There's a little country south of the U.S. that might disagree with that...
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As someone who is from, and living in, B.C., I can confirm that more people speak Mandarin than French here.
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Near a border is a an irrelevant legal distinction. You're in one region or the other. And you have to comply with the laws of that region. And yes, you should have to.
Nor does it matter if you don't share the politics of those that won democratic elections and made the law.
They want to defend their culture against the cultural imperialism of the US and their use of the English language. They are quite entitled to do so.
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The near-border quality was a situational description, not a legal one. I was arguing against the intent of the law, thanks.
Why follow stupid laws? (Score:2, Insightful)
Near a border is a an irrelevant legal distinction. You're in one region or the other. And you have to comply with the laws of that region. And yes, you should have to.
Even if those laws are morally wrong or economically stupid? Just because it is a law doesn't make it a good idea nor does it mean that you should automatically comply with a stupid and pointless law. Fight the good fight if it is worth fighting. I know plenty of businessmen (including some of my family) who refuse to do business in France because of the burden of this language law.
They want to defend their culture against the cultural imperialism of the US and their use of the English language.
Passing laws like this will not "defend their culture". It merely hurts them economically, makes them look stupid to the re
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I always find it amusing that somehow it is described as the French "defending" their culture against the English "cultural imperialism" when it is the French who use the strong arm tactics to force people to use French who otherwise don't want to.
My son was bemused when the Russian Olympics featured French announcements. Why not Spanish or Chinese which have each have more speakers than French?
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Re:much ado about nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends on what your definition of society is.
Some people view society as little more than a financial transaction with the government. I pay my tax. I get these services.
Others view society as sharing common values and culture. And this is a feedback loop. Government influences culture and values and people influence government.
I don't understand the attachment to language, but I know people do. I'm of Indian descent and there are lots of Indians who have a strong attachment to language. Many will say, we need to keep our language. The kids will learn English in school anyways. So I have plenty of exposure to this French way of thinking.
Quebec, for whatever reason wishes to maintain its culture, which includes the French Language. I think that is a valid goal even if I don't agree with it. But I acknowledge I'm an odd person who doesn't get attached to symbols and I'm a live and let live person.
Believe it or not, I think white people have a right to their culture as much as all other cultures on Earth. I don't get why white people are so keen on making sure immigrants get to keep their culture while doing nothing to support their own. But whatever... that is a side rant.
Does it go too far? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't live in Quebec. I live in the evil Toronto. But I certainly don't think invalid for a country/province/area to try and enforce its culture. Maybe it is a losing fight. I happen to think so. I'd much rather try and push culture positively by having quality French based media, controlling immigration... than punitive things like this.
But I think it is a strange day when people don't think a government has a role in culture of the society it governments.
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Yes. It's stupid and backwards but it's a democracy and the people of Quebec are voting for this kind of crap. It wouldn't be anything like Quebecois forcing it on the rest of Canada because this region is part of Quebec and Canada isn't part of Quebec ;)
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Read it again, pal, I think you got confused.
Re:much ado about nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure your solution is
A. Retarded, because having land in multiple provinces doesn't exempt you from their laws
B. Highly impractical, because a border town doesn't necessarily straddle a border
and
C. Obviously meant as an stupidly elaborate work-around for an unnecessary situation.
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Re:much ado about nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
No, to get rid of laws enforcing cultural hegemonies, which tend to be short-sighted, ineffective, and harmful.
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I'm not asking the stupid store to do it. I'm making a case in a public forum, because that influences how democracy makes laws, numbnuts.
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Given that this article is not about the United States government or its constitution I think a better analogy (if we still want to use the US) would be to look at how certain state-wide laws are inapplicable at border towns.
Not so long ago you could not buy any alcoholic beverage on Sunday in Massachusetts (at a store, restaurants were exempt). This gave the liquor stores of border towns in northern MA a disadvantage as some folks made their "regular" store just over the border so they need not worry abou
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having land in multiple provinces doesn't exempt you from their laws
Giving up your storefront in a province with impractical laws frees you from its laws regulating storefronts.
Obviously meant as an stupidly elaborate work-around for an unnecessary situation
And an airplane is an elaborate workaround for gravity. Elaborate workarounds are called engineering.
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Seriously? You think laws passed by humans are the same as laws like gravity?
"Hey, black dude, just hide from your master, a great work-around for slavery."
--tepples, c. 1730
Regulation of commercial speech (Score:2)
From the article, "Eva Cooper owns Delilah in the Parc". She also owns Delilah Glebe, which is in Ontario. Thus, in effect, she does own / rent / lease / has bought land on the other side of the border.
Exactly. If Cooper cannot obey the laws needed to run Delilah in the Parc, she always has the option of sticking to Delilah Glebe.
The concept is to what jurisdiction does one's FB feed belong to?
As I understand it, it belongs to the joint jurisdiction of the jurisdiction in which Facebook is headquartered, the jurisdiction in which the server exists, and the jurisdiction from which the business that maintains the page operates.
And does *any* governing body have veto powers when it comes down to what it is that you have to say?
Governments have seen fit to regulate commercial speech by business located within their borders more strictly than political speech.
Re:much ado about nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
"it needs to"
How fucked up has the world become where everyone gets to decide what a store owner "needs to" do but the store owner.
Why so defensive about French? (Score:3, Interesting)
How fucked up has the world become where everyone gets to decide what a store owner "needs to" do but the store owner.
Oh you mean we shouldn't require people to keep their storefront clear of trash? We shouldn't require them to pay their employees? How about we let them dump hazardous chemicals wherever they want? Look, this language law is stupid both morally and economically but let's not expand the stupidity by claiming that every requirement a business is subjected to is dumb. Some are very good ideas and others not so much. This language law falls into the not so much category.
What I'm confused by is why both Fra
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Well the French and the English have had their centuries of fighting each other for political and social dominance.
In short the English Won. However the French while military peaceful with the English will refuse to give up any social dominance they might have.
We see this in America. as Hispanics are growing, there is a massive push back to make sure that "'Merica don't be a Spanish Speaking country"
In short the French still see English as a bunch of barbarians, and they feel that they must keep civilizat
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storefront clear of trash
if it spills into the public property, then there is a problem. if the trash is completely on the stores property, the market will likely take care of it.
require them to pay their employees
the deal worked out between the person selling labor and the person buying labor is between those parties, and not your / our / my business.
dump hazardous chemicals wherever
again, if the chemicals get off the property then we have a problem. if the chemicals stay on the property, not your / our / my problem.
Re:Why so defensive about French? (Score:4, Insightful)
Alright... how about a business that discriminates against blacks? Or the disabled?
if the trash is completely on the stores property
Will the extra rats the trash attracts also stay on the stores property?
the market will likely take care of it.
How so? A restaurant can maintain a presentable dining room whilst maintaining a disgustingly unsanitary kitchen and food storage areas. The market might take care of it eventually, but how many people need to get sick (even die) before the 'market' catches on.
again, if the chemicals get off the property then we have a problem. if the chemicals stay on the property, not your / our / my problem.
Even if they are harmful to the employees?
the deal worked out between the person selling labor and the person buying labor is between those parties, and not your / our / my business.
So locking them in at night so they can't escape a fire is ok, or working with hazardous chemicals without adequate safety equipment is fine too (as above) as long they were desperate enough for food to feed their family to agree to those terms?
The market has long track record of ensuring the wealthy capitalist who owns the property and the means of production doesn't take advantage or abuse the fact that he tends to have a massive advantage* when negotiating wages and working conditions right?
That advantage being that he can generally easily afford not to hire someone today; and his business will continue to run and earn him money. Whilst a potential employee needs to eat and provide himself shelter each day, whether he works or not. Its only when employees band together into some sort of 'united front' that they can negotiate on the same level... but these united fronts for negotiation, or 'unions' are the root of all evil I'm sure.
Re:much ado about nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you had read and understood my comment, which I regret was not translated into French for your enjoyment, you would know that I do in fact disagree with this law. But uh, preach on! I'll be over here singing.
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It's supposed to prevent the creation of English speaking ghettos where the majority of French speakers never go due to the language barrier and a division between the communities is formed. In the UK we require that immigrants pass a basic English language just to get a visa and then have to pass a more advanced one to become a citizen on the same grounds. On the one hand we have had problems with integration, but on the other it is often deeply unfair to natives trying to marry foreigners.
I don't think fo
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I will. There are a lot of good reasons to have an official language.
Costs, same expectations, safety, I could go on.
The french take it too far.
It's why I think that in order to get a license, or use some services, you should be able to communicate to some degree in English.
The US is spending many billions of dollar trying to make every in every language.
Just to be clear, this is about using some government service, and driving. If you want to put all your store signs in Klingon, for all I care. well... I w
Languages tend to converge (Score:3)
I will. There are a lot of good reasons to have an official language. Costs, same expectations, safety, I could go on.
Most places have a de-facto language or at most two. People need to communicate and they're pretty good at figuring out how. In any locality there is a strong tendency to end up with the same language because of the need to communicate. Making it a law is at best redundant and at worst economically damaging if you take it to the extreme's Quebec has. The US doesn't have an official language because it doesn't need one. Neither does Canada really and I've spent enough of my life in Canada to know.
The US is spending many billions of dollar trying to make every in every language.
Nonsen
"It's a stupid law, I'm not going to defend it"... (Score:2)
Never mind the argument . . . I give up.
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The data and "storefront" resides on US soil.
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My response to a "request" of this nature would be one word. "NO!"
Je ne comprende pas!
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Nous ne comprendon pas!
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...and I wish them all the luck in eventually turning english into american, complete with logical, instead of historical, spellings of words.
Check.
Re:We are looser, that's it. (Score:4, Insightful)
English does have some nice features. For example it's one of the few languages that doesn't arbitaraily assign genders to non-gendered words. If you want to talk about a table, you don't have to memorize whether someone thousands of years ago decided tables are male or female for no logical reason.
Typical (Score:4, Insightful)
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I live in Québec and those law are pretty stu (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Best Buy as a local store (Score:3)
Still Flogging That Horse, Quebec? (Score:5, Informative)
In the late 90s, I worked at an internet software company in Quebec - we developed software for servers and sold it over the internet. No boxed copies, but your standard suite of services - a knowledge base, online documentation, phone and email access to sales and support staff, all of which was based in the province of Quebec.
Eventually, we got big enough to be noticed by the Quebec language police. They sent a letter, and then there were phone calls. They provided us with a list of requirements - you must answer your phones in French first, your web site must have all content that is available in English available in French as well, and so on.
We started costing out the implications of this, especially the confusion of the majority of our international (as in, American) clients. Then someone asked the important question - what happens if we don't comply?
"Well, you won't be allowed to sell to anyone in Quebec!" came the indignant response.
From then on, I took so much pleasure in informing the our small number of Quebec government clients that no, they would no longer be able to buy upgrades, tech support contracts, or anything else. The 98% of our out-of-province sales were unaffected.
Unfortunately, it sounds like Eva runs a brick-and-mortar store, so will need to comply or face actual fines.
French? Crazy Gibberish! (Score:5, Funny)
Why not translate it into a useful language, like Klingon?
If browsers auto-translate pages, what then? (Score:2)
The Chrome browser offers to translate whatever website's text into whichever language my operating system defaults to.
If all of the common web browsers / smart phones / google glass equivalents start doing this, I guess there will be no more need for this mandatory translation at the source side of things.
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Auto translators do not translate text displayed in a graphic.
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Good for you if you want to read a computer screen by taking pictures of it with an iPhone. Those translators are not perfect. So browser auto translator + iPhone + app + figuring out when app screws up. That sounds like a kludge to me.
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Text displayed in a graphic are only permissible as an alternative the browser may choose to display. The actual text representation must ALWAYS be included using the MANDATORY 'alt' tag. It is never permissible to make assumptions about the capabilities of the user agent, which may or may not have any effective way of displaying graphics. Widespread tolerance for scofflaws on this issue is the single largest source of suck on the internet toda
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You're omitting the other if: if the translation is good enough.
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So, how much better do you think some humans will translate if their language skills are not very high? Am I the only one who remembers Chinese to English translations from before the days of ubiquitous MLT (let alone today :) ) ?
Their country - their issue (Score:2, Insightful)
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If you kill someone in your house, is that none of anyone's business?
Facebook hosted in Quebec? (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook is an American storefront, not a Quebec one. I did not read the article but this seems very wrong indeed.
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Slashdot, vous êtes en violation (Score:2)
Oblig. "The Critic" (Score:3)
Don't Comply (Score:2)
Ici on parle everything (Score:5, Informative)
What jurisdiction does the Quebec Language Squad.. (Score:2)
have over the content of a web page not hosted on a Canadian server?
Or else what? Are they going to revoke her business license?
I have an idea (Score:2)
By the way, WE NEED THIS LAW in the southern US!
She should have asked them (Score:2)
Bill 101 (Score:2)
In French... (Score:2)
Fuck le police.
long arm of the law... (Score:2)
Quebec's irrational ide'e fixe reaches to Southern California and Mexico as well.
Many products in local stores have packaging printed in two languages- French & English. In my American city we have roughly 10,000 Spanish speakers for every French speaker. In Tijuana the imbalance is more extreme.
The language police have a long reach.
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Yeah, everyone has upgraded to France Mini. I think that's in Vegas or something.
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Um are you sure you don't mean "French"? Because this post is about something that happened in Canada...
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this is Canada, not France
When it comes to Quebec, what's the difference?
That's like asking what is the difference between a Texan and an american. :)
Re: France is obsolete today. (Score:5, Informative)
nope. USA is a country. England is not. The country is "The United Kingdom" of which England is one part.
Well, that comes as a big surprise to those of us who were born in one of the countries that comprise the United Kingdom. All this time we believed that Wales, England, and Scotland were each separate countries, with unique cultures and languages that were just part of the UK. Maybe history and having separate laws and legislative systems got us poor little souls confused.
How lucky we are to have such experts on the InterWebz who can set us straight.
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All countries are "artificial conglomerates". (Although you might argue that Australia has a rational based on physical geography.) Ask Cornwall how they feel about being part of the artificial conglomerate called England.
I've never been to "Whales", but expect it to be quite small as countries go.
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England is a country that has been incorporated into an artificial conglomerate along with the countries of Scotland and Whales. These artificial constructs tend to come apart anywhere in the timespan of a few decades to one or two centuries. In fact, the secession movement in Scotland is gaining more ground recently than ever before. And similarly, there are now some new countries to appear as well as among many others the California Republic and the Texas Republic secede from the United States
Hilarious. The artificial construct that you expect to come apart in two centuries at most was established by the Act of Union in 1707 when the UK was formed. Wales and England were joined into one kingdom starting back in 1535. We've had an odd period of dissolving nations, mostly in Europe, since the end of the Cold War, but notice that Quebec rejected independence in two plebiscites already and Scotland is likely to reject independence in its own plebiscite, according to all the polls.
I suppose we can so
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Especially Scott. He's a real dick.
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we all know english people won't make any efforts to learn french even if the live in france directly
A shit-ton of French students in high schools and colleges across the U.S. would beg to differ, Monsieur.
Re: And in other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quebec isn't a country. French or otherwise.
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But they absolutely refuse to allow any regions of Quebec the same courtesy.
Not all of Quebec wants to go. If Quebec left at least 25% of Quebec would leave Quebec and join a neighboring Canadian province. Also Quebec would be in a huge mess without the rest of Canada paying it's bills.
Pure version of frogish? Not what the French have told me. More like Mexican is to Spanish.
Re: And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
shut the fuck up asshole. we all know english people won't make any efforts to learn french even if the live in france directly.
I am Canadian, I live in Ontario, I am an anglophone, and I went to french immersion school for 4 years, with about 90 other students in my class, and studied with Rosetta Stone for two, but I live in an almost exclusively english area.
I can read french pretty well, but I can't really speak it well due to lack of practice. So anyways, english people do make efforts to learn french. It's usually the French people who put us off of it with attitudes like yours.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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To extend this, I've known plenty of people who have lived in Asian countries (for at least a few years) but never really picked up the language. It's one of the advantages of being a native English speaker... you can go almost anywhere on Earth and find people that know enough English for you to live day-to-day life. The only things you really need to pick up are words and phrases with no direct translation.
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I'd actually say that being a native English speaker is a DISADVANTAGE overall. You come to believe that the world must speak in your language, and never make any personal investment in learning the language (or culture) of another land. I am a native English speaker, and felt "disabled" when I live in Europe amongst people that routinely spoke 4-5 languages fluently (including English). Simply growing up with exposure to those languages is enough to help diversify their brain... and in my experience, th
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I can't speak a single damn one of them and can barely read a tourist map.
I studied linguistics for 2 years and was very good at it, but it simply feels impossible to learn another language. The amount of rote memorization, unusual grammar, and idioms makes the task seem insurmo
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To see how long that disadvantage lasts look at the frogs, who still dream of the day when the language of education and science was frogish. Even though it's been 200 years.
Re: And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarly, I am very offended when I call a bank or any other local business and the first thin I am asked is if I speak Spanish, to press '9'.
Now, I also recognize that "speaking English" is not a strict definition. Many natives don't do that very well.
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If people are not somehow gently pushed to learn English by speaking it, they have little incentive to do so, and you have these enclaves of foreign-speaking residents who develop a society of their own separate from the rest of the country. Overall, society pays the cost of having to support business (private and government) in more than one language. It does not provide value, except to facilitate tourism and immigration, whi
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Sorry to tell you but overdubbing US made movies into French does not a culture make.
The Quebec culture is a shadow of what it once was.
Please inform yourself (Score:2)
http://www.languagepolicy.net/... [languagepolicy.net]
read pass the first page, you will get a lot of information about language laws in the USA and you will stop looking like a idiot.
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Okay, I did.
Oddly, I didn't see anything requiring that anyone but the Government use English as the "official language".
A bit different than Quebec, eh?
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But, why doesn't the rest of the country have laws to preserve their white, protestant, english speaking heritage? Don't Canadians appreciate the positive effect to "their lands and people" from keeping it white?
Re:Chers slashdotters... (Score:5, Interesting)
Its important to a small zealot minority. I'm also french Canadian and have lived there most of my life. There's a couple of people who are impossibly vocal about it. The rest don't care or even dread it. They do a heck of a lot more than give slaps on the wrists, with daily fines and penalties, forcing companies to have "councils" that oversee usage of the language, etc.
The only reason stuff like Best Buy is still Best Buy, is because you can negotiate. I worked for a very large international company that opened an office in Montreal. They couldn't realistically comply with all the laws, so they were making deals: one of the deal was to have everyone, including english-only speakers, have only access to french computers/operating systems/keyboards and not be allowed to change them.
Yeah, that was a pain.
I worked for another that was almost exclusively english speakers. We were still forced to translate all our reports in french, including the one offs that were only read by a single specific executive who didn't even know french.
In the end, it hurts competitiveness on a global level. There's a reason salaries are so much lower in Montreal than in other large Canadian cities. The cost of doing business is just insane. So I left.