The American version that gives a Canadian site away
A Quebec business translating its site into English almost always gets a version written for the United States. An Ontario buyer sees it within seconds, and they do not conclude that you translated badly. They conclude that you are not from here, so shipping, service and warranty will come from somewhere else.
The Government of Canada publishes its own rules for written English in this country, in a Translation Bureau tool. This is not a matter of taste, it is a documented standard, and most commercial translation memories do not apply it.
The four signals that give you away
Spelling first, and it is the most visible. The our and re endings, the doubled consonant, the que in certain nouns. A spell checker set to American English corrects all of them the wrong way, silently, on every save.
Units next. A spec sheet in inches and pounds, with no metric equivalent, forces the buyer to convert before comparing. They will not do it, they will open the tab of the competitor who did the work.
Cited standards third, and this is the costliest signal in B2B. An American certification on its own, without its Canadian equivalent, tells a professional buyer that your product may not be approved for their market. They will not ask, they will drop you from the list.
Formats last. Postal code against ZIP, province against state, a currency displayed with no mention of which one. A form that rejects a Canadian postal code is a sale lost at the final step, and nobody inside the business sees it happen.
Why it costs more than it looks
None of these signals produces a complaint. They produce hesitation, and hesitation gets resolved at the competitor's. It is a loss that appears in no report, because it happens before the inquiry.
The fix, on the other hand, is cheap. It is done once, on the pages that actually receive English Canadian traffic, not across the whole site. Thirty pages are enough in most cases.
Three checks that take an hour
- Is the spell checker in your publishing tool set to Canadian rather than American English?
- Do your spec sheets give both unit systems, and your certifications both reference frameworks?
- Do your forms accept a Canadian postal code and show province rather than state?
Finding the pages where these signals actually cost you sales is part of what we cover in a paid audit.
The reverse holds too. A Canadian business aiming at the United States that keeps only its Canadian standards sends exactly the same signal to an American buyer. The point is not to pick a side, it is to name both when you serve both.
Opening the English-speaking market is covered in what translation does not settle in the rest of Canada, and the mechanics of versions in what breaks between translation, addresses and search. The American case is covered in what changes when you cross the border.
Opening a market is the subject of the Develop a new market goal.
- Translation Bureau, Public Services and Procurement Canada, Writing Tips Plus, Language Portal of Canada, consulted August 2026. Rules of written English usage in Canada, spelling and conventions.
- Google Search Central, Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites, official documentation, consulted August 2026.
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