Game Changer: "Canadian-French" is Coming to Microsoft Translator

"Candian French" just won la Coupe Stanley! Microsoft recently announced it will be adding our favorite French to its Translator. We know this may not seem like a big deal, "oh the big wigs at Microsoft acknowledged that Quebec French is a distant language." We assure you it's a huge deal.

You may be asking what is different about Microsoft Translator? Translators are evil, right? You need to learn the language on your own. Well it's a lot more than a translator. Here is a quick description:

"Microsoft Translator is a multilingual machine translation cloud service. Microsoft Translator is integrated across multiple consumer, developer, and enterprise products; including Bing, Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Lync, Yammer, Skype Translator, Visual Studio, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Translator apps for Windows, Windows Phone, iPhone and Apple Watch, and Android phone and Android Wear."

This opens up so many opportunities to use the language on blogs like this, business websites, apps, the list goes on! Apple has had this on its products for quite some time, but Microsoft still continues to dominate the "office space" world.

Microsoft goes pretty in-depth as to why it added the language. none of the reasoning is a surprise to us!

"As one of Canada’s two official languages, French is an important part of the fabric of our nation, and each regional dialect tells an important story about that region’s history. These local nuances mean that idioms that make sense in Montreal may not be relevant in Moncton or Winnipeg, so Microsoft worked with translators and consultants throughout Canada to produce models that could accurately translate Canadian French, regardless of whether it was from Québec, Ontario, New Brunswick or elsewhere. As we continue use to Translator, we will gather more data from Canada, and the tool will become more precise over time."

We really hope this leads to more of the French we love in North America. When things are translated in the northeast United States it should be done into Quebec French. This will only make doing that easier. Google (we know you are) if you're listening, now is the time to make a change too!