French Translator and Copywriter

Imagine being a copywriter at a Parisian startup. Where your CEO must make a ritual sacrifice to the Académie Française each day (involving something called “pain au chocolat”?), hoping that their company won’t go bankrupt, because one of your blog posts broke some obscure and inflexible grammar rule — whereby all the executives were sentenced to ten years hard labour.

Now: picture your life at Transit. Sunlight beams in from the windows. Serious meetings are interrupted by belly-laughs. There’s fresh espresso. Smiles. Bicycle parking. A bonfire on the balcony filled with discarded tophats, Louboutins, Bescherelles, and €2,000-per-bedroom leases. Okaymaybe not the bonfire.

We’re looking for a plucky French language translator and copywriter, no bowtie required: you’ll be working with Transit’s communications team, helping our French-speaking riders (Montréalers, Parisians, Trifluviens, Strasbourgeois, Very Nice People, etc.) get around their cities without their own car. Your weekly copywriting duties will have you translating and filing original copy with flair, to be read by millions of riders.

**Responsibilities**:

- This role is a part-time contract position (~15 guaranteed hours a week). You won’t be on call, and we’ll give you at least 24 hours notice for any projects that need your help. Obviously we’ll give you more time for longer projects.
- You’ll write and translate user help pages, app strings, blog posts, website pages, case studies, standard customer support texts, press releases, app update descriptions (and more). You’ll be essential to making our app sing in French.
- Given that we’re based in Montreal and work throughout Québec and France, original writing (i.e., not a translation) will come up from time to time as part of the job. We’ll give you an outline and direction, but sometimes you’ll be asked to come up with original copy.
- Your partners in crime will be user support specialists, agency partnership professionals, and spinmasters communications people. Yep: it’s a lot of moving parts, but we’ll keep it all spinning smoothly

Requirements
- You’re a native (or native-equivalent) French speaker who has fun playing with its devilishly-detailed nuances
- Is fluent in English (if you could translate Dr. Seuss, you’re good)
- Organized and detailed oriented: your writing will be seen by millions of users all over the world
- An artist’s respect for the beauty of French
- Familiar with Transit’s brand voice and can inflect it with different tones depending on the audience
- Tech sense (you don’t need to know how to code, but you must be able to explain how Transit works to both uninformed + informed audiences - and be comfortable with various software tools to write your translations)
- Ability to make québecois cultural references in your writing. It helps to know who Yolande Ouellet and Kevin are.
- Familiar with local distinctions in different French-language markets. Most of our francophone users are in Canada and France — the vocabulary, style, and references should resonate with them
- Can write well, and translate developer-speak into something the Average Gob can understand

Would be nice if
- Polyglot Do you know Spanish? Portuguese? Inuktitut? German? The more languages, the merrier.
- Experience in communications, ideally in the tech or transportation worlds
- You know how to navigate your city without your own car — monkey-branching from bus to bikeshare to scooter to subway to ridehail without batting an eyelash

Compensation and benefits
$25+ CAD per hour, depending on experience
- Apple laptop and equipment
- Flexible work hours, from home or the office (your call)
- Spend your time at our office, surrounded by first-rate teammates and the best view of Montreal and/or (insert exotic Zoom background)
- When you’re in the office: you’ll be in urbanist heaven, surrounded by Mile End’s urban gardens, bike paths, BIXI docks, bus stops, a metro station, and limitless restaurantscafésbarsconcert hallsbagel boutiques
- Communal lunch-and-learn with free food in the office each week
- Monthly 5 à 7s (translation: happy hour) at the office, including on our terrasse overlooking Montreal when it’s warm out
- Not based in Montreal? We’ll fly you here to be with the team once per year.

How to apply
Send your resume, a French-language writing sample (like a blog post, or Instagram caption, or some other piece of French-language writing you’re proud of) along with a paragraph or two explaining why you want to work at Transit and a translation of the following:

- At Transit, our mission is to make life better without a car._
- For too long, cars have been at the centre of our lives. Today, cities are embracing better ways to get around: by bus, train, bike, and foot. At Transit, we help you make the most of them so you don’t need to own a car._
- Not having to own a car should make your life better: less ru