A bilingual website for Canadian non-profits sounds simple. Have an English version. Have a French version. Add a language switcher in the top right. Done.
Except it is never that simple. The number of Canadian non-profits running a bilingual website that is half broken, half Google Translate, and not compliant with anything is genuinely surprising.
This post is for organisations that need to do bilingual properly. Federally funded organisations, charities operating in Quebec, associations with francophone members across the country, healthcare and education bodies serving both official languages. We have built bilingual websites for clients including Tourism Montreal, and these are the rules we work to.
When a bilingual website is actually mandatory
Most Canadian non-profits are not legally required to be bilingual. But a meaningful number are, and the requirements have tightened recently.
You are legally required to operate a bilingual website if any of these apply.
You receive funding from a federal department or agency that has bilingual service obligations under the Official Languages Act. This includes Heritage Canada, Health Canada, ESDC, and most others. Read your funding agreement.
You operate in Quebec and have 25 or more employees. Bill 96 (which amended the Charter of the French Language in 2022) requires you to offer services in French, including digital services and websites that serve Quebec customers or members. The threshold drops to 25 employees in June 2025.
You are a federally regulated organisation or a Crown corporation. The OLA applies in full.
You are bidding on federal government contracts. Bilingual capability is often a procurement requirement.
If none of those apply, bilingual is strategic rather than mandatory. Still worth doing if 22.8% of your audience speaks French as a first language, which is roughly the Canadian average.
Google Translate is not bilingual
We need to be direct about this. A WordPress plugin that auto-translates your site with Google Translate or DeepL is not a bilingual website. It is an English website with a translation widget.
Why this matters:
Search engines treat machine-translated content as low quality and often will not index it.
Quebec's OQLF (the office responsible for enforcing the French Language Charter) does not accept machine translation as compliance.
French speakers can tell within one sentence that the content was machine translated. The professional credibility cost is significant.
Funders who require bilingual services do not consider Google Translate to satisfy that requirement.
A real bilingual website has French content written or translated by a professional. Each language version has its own URL. Each version is editable as a first-class version, not a derivative.
URL structure that works
Three options for structuring a bilingual website. Each has trade-offs.
The subdirectory approach. English at yoursite.ca and French at yoursite.ca/fr/. This is what Google recommends. Easiest to set up, shares domain authority across languages, works with most CMS platforms. We use this for most of our bilingual builds.
The subdomain approach. English at yoursite.ca and French at fr.yoursite.ca. Cleaner separation, sometimes preferred by organisations with separate francophone teams. Requires more DNS configuration and splits domain authority slightly.
The separate domain approach. English at yoursite.ca and French at votresite.ca. Maximum brand flexibility for French-speaking markets. Most expensive to maintain. Almost never the right call unless you have a separate French brand.
Whichever option you pick, every page needs a hreflang tag pointing to its counterpart in the other language. Without hreflang, Google cannot reliably serve the right version to the right searcher, and your French SEO ranks against your English SEO.
What professional French translation costs
Real numbers from recent projects.
A small association website (about 15 pages, light content) translated to French. Budget roughly $2,800 to $4,200 for translation, depending on technical complexity.
A standard non-profit website (about 30 pages plus a blog). Budget roughly $6,000 to $10,000 for initial translation. Add 15% to 20% per year for blog and content updates.
A large university or healthcare site (100+ pages, ongoing program updates). Budget $15,000 and up for initial translation, with an ongoing retainer for content updates.
The cheapest professional translators in Canada run about $0.18 to $0.25 per word. Certified OQLF compliant translators for Quebec specific work run higher, around $0.30 to $0.45 per word.
If you are tempted to do it cheaper with a bilingual staff member, that is sometimes fine for small content updates. It is not fine for the initial professional translation of a website that will be in the public eye.
Common bilingual website mistakes
A few patterns we see consistently on Canadian bilingual websites.
The French version is two versions behind. Content updates happen in English, then forgotten in French. Within six months the French site looks abandoned.
The language switcher takes the user to the homepage instead of the equivalent page. If a French speaker is reading a specific article and clicks the switcher, they should land on the French version of that article, not back at /accueil/.
URL slugs are not translated. yoursite.ca/services/web-design and yoursite.ca/fr/services/web-design. The /services/web-design/ part should be /fr/services/conception-web/ for French SEO and user expectations.
PDFs and downloadable resources are English only. The website is bilingual but every linked annual report, brochure, and form is in English.
Forms and confirmation emails are English only. Someone fills out a French contact form and gets an English autoresponder.
Date and number formats are American style. French Canadian formatting is 8 juin 2026, not June 8, 2026. Currency is 5 000 $ CAD, not $5,000 CAD. Phone numbers and postal codes do not need changing, but everything else does.
Maintenance reality
A bilingual website costs more than a unilingual one to maintain. About 1.4 to 1.6 times the ongoing content cost in practice, because every blog post, news update, and program change needs translation and parallel publishing.
If your organisation does not have a budget for ongoing French content work, building a bilingual website is the wrong move. Better to build a strong English website with a French summary page that says "Pour des renseignements en français, veuillez nous contacter à..." than to build a bilingual site that decays within a year.
