Bilingualism

Almost all external-facing content that CPAC produces need to be available in both English and French.

For guidance on how bilingualism applies to a particular project, please consult with the Communications team.

General guidelines to keep in mind when planning translation:

• Print materials should indicate that the other language version is available (“Également disponible en français” or “Also available in English”). In the rare instances where only one language is available, note this as well (“en anglais seulement” or “French only”).
• Content translated into French is typically about 25 per cent longer.
• Expectations for capitalization, punctuation and date formats are different in English and French.
• For CPAC staff: For more information on bilingualism requirements and translation, please refer to the Translation and Interpretation Services page on Central PERK.
• For external vendors: Please refer to the French style and translation guide, and make sure you’ve consulted with the CPAC Translation team.

If you have any questions, please email translationqc@partnershipagainstcancer.ca.

French formatting checklist

Refer to the guidelines below to verify formatting for content published in French. For detailed guidelines, please see the French style and translation guide (written in French).

Partenariat vs PCCC

Our name in French is: “Partenariat canadien contre le cancer” or “le Partenariat.” Do not use “PCCC.”

Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control

Always italicize “Stratégie canadienne de lutte contre le cancer” but never “Stratégie” alone. 

Writing about products

Products that include links to websites should direct to the correct language version when both are available. They should also indicate in brackets immediately after the URL, or anchor text, when it is not available in the target language. Use (en anglais seulement) or (in French only).

Italicize names of products, whether it’s a PDF or digital report. 

• Do not italicize subpages of a digital product, just the title of the product.
• It is preferable to use italics rather than double quotes when referring to a product or project.

Use sentence case on names of CPAC products (title case does not exist in French). 

Casing on external products:

French products: use sentence case (title case does not exist in French).

For English products with no official French translation: copy whatever casing is used on the external document (but use sentence case in reference lists).

Note that title case should not be used in reference lists. Use sentence case instead. 

Publications

If an external publication only exists in English:

• If the title appears in the body of the text: it is left in English in the French version, with a translation provided between brackets, followed by “en anglais seulement” (= in English only).
• If the title appears in a reference list, it is left in English, and no translation is provided. The mention “en anglais seulement” is only added for resources that are available online (and never for journal articles, even when a DOI is provided).

Publication titles should always be italicized in French (except in cases where the title used is not the exact/full title). This also applies to journal titles as well as journal issue numbers.

References

In French, we follow the APA style for reference lists.

Website headings

Subtitles on Topics, About us, News: If it’s a complete sentence, use a period. If it’s a fragment, do not use a period.

Links

Articles (le, la, les, l’, un, une, des) typically aren’t hyperlinked, unless the hyperlinked text contains several elements introduced by articles.

Punctuation

There is a (non-breaking) space before the colon, as well as after the opening quotation mark and before the closing one. 

Footnote markers and reference numbers used in the body of the text are placed before the punctuation.

There is a period at the end of each reference. 

There is no space before or after the slash bar. 

Numbers

Replace periods with commas for decimals.  

Replace commas with (non-breaking) spaces in numbers > 1,000. 

There is a (non-breaking) space before symbols in French, and the currency symbol is always after the number.  

The html code for non-breaking spaces is   

Months

Months don’t start with a capital letter in French (unless they are the first element of a fragment, for instance in a table). 

Years

Calendar and fiscal years – use hyphen and display 8 digits.