>An aside: I read an article today that says that Quebec is starting to slam locally-hosted websites that are not bilingual. Is this for real? Jeez....
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That's for real. Even worse - the Quebec govt. just recently lost a court case launched by french speaking employees in the pharmaceutical industry - the ministry in charge of language decided that they could no longer use english software on their desktops. The employees took the govt. to court and won, the ministry back-pedalled and said they only meant that the employer had to make available a french version of the software where one was available, yadda, yadda. Total bull. The pharmaceutical industry was a test case for them, and if nobody had balked, their intention was to apply the same restriction to all other sectors in Quebec. The same happened with the web sites - the language law here (Bill 101) orginally dictated that ALL advertising, commercial postings, etc. had to be in French only under threat of fines, revocation of business permits, etc. That was gradually softened so that languages other than French are permitted on signs if they are no larger than half the size of the French version. Personally, I don't think that's too unreasonable - it helps preserve and promote the French identity of Quebec. However, the govt. again suddenly decided that web sites were considered commercial postings, and were covered by the same law under threat of fines, revocation of business permits, etc. When the first victims sqawked, the minister in charge first offered her "interpretation" of Bill 101 - that the pages could be unilingual english only if they were hosted on a site physically located outside of Quebec! Talk about making it up on the fly! So the pattern is that they have a broad, all-encompassing law that they arbitrarily interpret any way they want, with fines, threats, etc., up until (if ever) someone decides to take them to court, after which they back off half the time.
To really make the point, the latest language related embarrassment I remember was several months ago - a restaurateur here in Montreal was being threatened with fines from the Office de la Langue Francaise - the offence - the Double Diamond beer coasters for he was using contained a phrase that was in english only!