Should I translate my app to fr-FR or fr-CA?

Pick by market. Base on fr-FR (France) if you target France, Belgium, Switzerland, or Francophone Africa; ship a dedicated fr-CA file for Quebec and the rest of Canada. If you serve both France and Canada, ship both as separate locales — the vocabulary and formatting differences are large enough that one file won't read as native to both.

Is Canadian French really different enough to need its own string file?

Yes. fr-CA uses courriel (not e-mail), fin de semaine (not week-end), and magasiner (not faire les courses), formats dates as aaaa-mm-jj, uses the dollar, and is far less tolerant of anglicisms than France. Those differences appear directly in UI strings, so a shared fr file reads as unadapted to Quebec users.

How many plural forms does French need?

French uses CLDR categories one, other, and many. Zero and one both take the singular (one) — '0 message', '1 message' — while 2 and up use other ('2 messages'). The many category covers large and compact-notation numbers like '1,2 million'. Author these as .stringsdict or Android plurals entries.

Will my placeholders and brand names survive French translation?

Yes. iOS placeholders (%@, %lld, %1$@) and Android placeholders (%s, %d, %1$s) are preserved exactly, as are URLs, emails, @handles, and brand phrases you mark for protection. French adds narrow no-break spaces before punctuation like ! and :, so review those in QA.

Does the free plan cover French?

The free Indie plan covers your first language with unlimited words. Adding French as an additional locale — or shipping fr-FR and fr-CA together — requires Indie Plus at $20/mo, or $10/mo billed annually, which unlocks unlimited languages.

Translate Your App to French: fr-FR (France) vs fr-CA (Canada)

By The strings.dev team · Last updated 2026-07-17

French looks like a single localization target. It is really two. The gap between fr-FR (France) and fr-CA (Canadian French) is wide enough that shipping one string file to both markets reads as machine-translated to at least one of them — the vocabulary, the typography, the currency symbol, and even how the language counts all fork at the variant line.

This page helps you pick the right French — or ship both as first-class locales — for your iOS or Android app's native strings.

fr-FR or fr-CA? Choose the market, not just the language

The BCP-47 codes you ship under are fr-FR for France and fr-CA for Canada (Quebec). Two more are worth knowing: fr-BE (Belgium) and fr-CH (Switzerland). You don't have to translate all four — but you do have to decide which base variant your fr file represents, because a French user in Montreal and one in Lyon will flag different words as wrong.

A useful rule of thumb:

Targeting France, Belgium, Switzerland, or Francophone Africa → base on fr-FR.
Targeting Quebec / the rest of Canada → ship a dedicated fr-CA file.
Serving both France and Canada seriously → ship both. strings.dev treats fr-FR and fr-CA as separate first-class locales rather than collapsing them into one "French."

See the iOS & Android locale code reference for how these map to Xcode and Android resource folders (values-fr-rCA, etc.).

The vocabulary that actually diverges

Quebec French and Metropolitan French share grammar but split hard on everyday product nouns — and Quebec is far less tolerant of anglicisms. France happily writes e-mail in UI copy; Quebec's courriel is not optional there.

English	fr-FR (France)	fr-CA (Canada)
email	e-mail / mail	courriel
weekend	week-end	fin de semaine
to go shopping	faire les courses	magasiner
to chat	chatter	clavarder
parking	parking	stationnement

Get this wrong and the copy isn't incorrect so much as foreign — a Quebec user reads "week-end" and "e-mail" as a France build that nobody adapted.

The same string, two variants

Here the vocabulary split shows up right inside the resource file. Note that the iOS %lld placeholder is carried through untouched in both:

// iOS — Localizable.strings (source: en)
"inbox.unread" = "You have %lld unread emails";

// fr-FR (France)
"inbox.unread" = "Vous avez %lld e-mails non lus";

// fr-CA (Canada) — courriel, never "e-mail"
"inbox.unread" = "Vous avez %lld courriels non lus";

French also runs roughly 15–20% longer than English, so test your tightest labels. "Settings" becomes Réglages on iOS, "Cancel" becomes Annuler, "Done" becomes Terminé — short strings inflate fastest and are exactly where truncation bites.

Typography and formatting French forces on you

French punctuation is not English punctuation with accents. In fr-FR, a narrow no-break space precedes ; : ! ? and sits inside the guillemets « ». That space must survive translation, or your exclamation looks broken:

// Source
"welcome.toast" = "Welcome back, %@!";

// fr-FR — narrow no-break space before the « ! »
"welcome.toast" = "Bon retour, %@ !";

The %@ name placeholder is preserved; the spacing is the point. Quebec typography follows the same rule for the colon but is more permissive before ! ?.

Numbers and currency diverge too:

	fr-FR	fr-CA
Decimal separator	comma → `1 234,56`	comma → `1 234,56`
Thousands	narrow space	narrow space
Currency	`12,99 €` (symbol after)	`12,99 $` (CAD, symbol after)
Date	`16/07/2026` (jj/mm/aaaa)	`2026-07-16` (aaaa-mm-jj)

Both variants put the currency symbol after the amount with a space — the opposite of English $12.99. Let the platform's NumberFormatter / NumberFormat handle these from the locale rather than hardcoding.

Plurals: French makes zero singular

This is the classic bug. French uses the singular for 0 and 1 — "0 message", "1 message", but "2 messages". English pluralizes zero; French does not. In CLDR terms, French cardinals use three categories:

Value	CLDR category	Form
0, 1	`one`	1 message
2, 3, 100…	`other`	2 messages
large / compact (e.g. millions)	`many`	1,2 million de messages

The many category exists for large and compact-notation numbers, where the noun phrase shifts (note the added de). If your counter strings ever render millions in compact form, provide that form; otherwise one and other cover the app. Author these as real .stringsdict / plurals entries, not string concatenation.

Beyond France and Quebec

French is official across France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, and much of West and Central Africa — a large advisory market map. These are context for tone and word choice, not separate metadata features: strings.dev localizes your in-app native strings, and App Store listing text is out of scope. Belgian and Swiss French carry their own number words (septante, nonante) and Swiss formatting quirks, so treat fr-FR as a European base and branch only where a market justifies it.

Adding French in strings.dev

Upload your Xcode .xcloc or Android strings.xml, add your app description so every string is translated in context, and pick fr-FR, fr-CA, or both. Brand phrases stay locked via placeholder protection; iOS %@ %lld %1$@ and Android %s %d %1$s are preserved automatically.

On tiers, one honest note: the free Indie plan covers your first language (1 language, unlimited words). Adding French as a second or later locale — or shipping fr-FR and fr-CA together — needs Indie Plus ($20/mo, or $10/mo billed annually) for unlimited languages. See pricing or start on the free plan, and browse the mobile localization guide for the full workflow.