Ironically, the test case involves the French suing a true friend of France. The Georgia Institute of Technology set up a campus at Metz, in eastern France, because it thought the country important enough to study by actually living there. Now it faces a lawsuit because this information has not been translated into French. But the two state-sponsored French language groups pressing the case are not appeased. We just want the law applied.
French people have a right to know in their own language what is happening in their own country.
A Paris court promises to decide the case April 28. Other French ridicule their government for fighting the Internet and predict that Toubon's language war will be no more effective than the Maginot line was in stopping German tanks. Part of the reality is that a number of French companies have found it profitable to conduct Internet business in English only. So far, the French language police have notably chosen not to take their own country's big exporters to court for failing to translate everything. Even far poorer countries like Mexico and Poland are adding Internet connections much faster than France.