Google now uses BERT to understand searches in more than seventy languages, French included. If your site has French pages, have them written or properly translated by a fluent writer rather than left as machine translation.

From English to seventy languages

Google said yesterday that BERT, the language model it began using in October for English searches in the US, is now rolling out to Search in more than seventy languages.

BERT helps Google read a search as a sentence rather than a string of keywords, paying attention to the small words that change what a question means.

For most businesses in Canada, one language on that list matters more than the rest. French searches are now read the same way.

Which raises a question about the French pages on many Canadian websites, and who, or what, wrote them.

Who has French pages

The second group is where machine translation is most tempting. A BC tourism business wants to welcome French-speaking visitors, has no French speaker on staff, and runs its English pages through a translation tool.

What machine translation still gets wrong

Translation tools have improved enormously in the last few years. The result is usually fluent at a glance, which is exactly what makes it risky: nobody on staff can tell where it went wrong.

It often chooses France's vocabulary over Canada's. Canadian French says courriel for email, fin de semaine for the weekend and stationnement for parking, where France often borrows the English word. A Quebec reader notices in the first line.

Trade terms come out literal. A word with an exact meaning in your industry is translated as its everyday meaning, and the sentence reads as if written by someone who has never done the work.

And the tone can wander between formal and familiar from one sentence to the next, which a French reader hears at once.

Why BERT makes the gap matter

BERT changes how Google understands the search. It does not rewrite your page, and it does not reward or punish translation as such.

What it does is read a French searcher's question the way they phrased it, in the words French-speaking Canadians actually use. A page written in those words answers the question; a literal translation may not contain them at all.

The visitor who arrives is the larger issue. They read three lines, see that nobody who speaks French wrote them, and judge the business accordingly.

Google's own view of automatic translation

None of this is new advice from Google. Its guidelines have long listed text translated by an automated tool and published without human review as an example of automatically generated content.

That puts unreviewed machine translation in the same family as other content produced without a person, which Google says it may take action against.

A translation tool used for a first draft, which a fluent writer then corrects and adapts, is a different thing. The human review is the point.

A worked example

A family-run campground and RV park in the Kootenays sits on a route many summer travellers from Quebec take west. Its French pages had been produced by a translation tool when the site was built.

Full hookup sites came out as a literal phrase no camper uses. French-speaking campers in Canada know the same thing as a site with trois services: water, electricity and sewer.

The deposit policy, translated sentence by sentence, was unclear about refunds, and French-speaking guests kept emailing in English to ask what it meant.

A fluent Quebec writer rewrote the French pages from the English, rather than correcting the translation line by line, and left a short list of the park's own terms for future updates.

The French pages now have their own addresses, titles and descriptions, and booking confirmations go out in the language the guest booked in.

Writing French pages properly

Start with the pages customers act on: services, prices, booking and contact. A French home page that leads to English booking forms helps nobody.

Give the writer a glossary of your own terms, with what each means in practice, so every page uses the same words for the same things.

Translate everything a visitor meets, not only the paragraphs: menus, buttons, form labels, error messages, image descriptions and the emails the site sends.

Titles and descriptions come first

A French searcher meets your page in the results before they meet it on screen: as a title, with a short description beneath it.

Pages translated by pasting text into a template often keep the English title and description, because those sit in the page's settings rather than its text. The result is an English listing for a French page.

Write a French title and description for every French page, in the words customers use. They are the first French your business shows anyone.

Separate pages Google can find

Each language needs its own pages at their own addresses, such as a French section under /fr/. A script that swaps the text on a single address may leave Google seeing only one language.

Hreflang annotations, short lines in each page's code, tell Google which French page is the equivalent of which English one, so each searcher is shown the right version.

The language switch should lead to the same page in the other language, not back to the French home page. And let visitors choose, rather than redirecting them automatically by their browser's language.

The counter-case

A business with no French-speaking customers does not need French pages, and should not add machine-translated ones to look bilingual.

A small business with some francophone customers may be better served by one well-written French page, covering the services and how to get in touch, than by a full translation it cannot keep current.

Smaller and properly written beats complete and machine made. Whatever the size, the French pages should read as if a French speaker wrote them, because one did.

The French pages, in order

  1. List every page that exists in French.
  2. Ask a fluent reader to mark what reads badly.
  3. Start with the pages customers act on.
  4. Give the writer a glossary of your terms.
  5. Translate titles, buttons and emails too.
  6. Connect each pair of pages with hreflang.
  7. Update both languages whenever one changes.

Step seven keeps the work from decaying. French pages rewritten once and then forgotten fall behind the English within a season, still describing prices and services that have changed.

The same principle in English is covered in BERT and writing like a person.

Frequently asked questions

What did Google announce about BERT this week?

That BERT, which began helping Google understand English searches in the US in October, is rolling out to Search in more than seventy languages, French included.

Does BERT penalise machine-translated pages?

Not as such; it changes how Google reads searches. But Google's guidelines have long treated unreviewed automatic translation as automatically generated content, and readers notice it immediately.

What does machine translation get wrong in French?

It often uses France's vocabulary rather than Canada's, translates trade terms literally, and drifts between formal and familiar tone, which a French reader hears at once.

Which French pages should be fixed first?

The ones customers act on: services, prices, booking and contact. A French home page that leads to English forms helps nobody.

How does Google find the French version?

Give each language its own addresses, link each pair with hreflang annotations, and let visitors choose their language rather than redirecting them automatically.

Can a small business have one French page?

Yes. One well-written French page covering the services and contact details is better than a full machine translation nobody can keep current.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

French pages written by a translation tool?

Have a fluent reader mark what reads badly. We will set up the French pages, hreflang and language switch properly.

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