An apparent translation error on posters promoting a City of Ottawa initiative is turning some heads in downtown Ottawa, swapping one French word for another with a very different meaning.
The city installed purple-coloured posters this week to promote its Street Seats pilot program or “Uncommon Spaces,” closing off three sections of Centretown to vehicles to build spaces for gatherings and events.
Several social media users pointed out a typo on the French-language signs promoting the initiative that read “Placettes Pubiques,” missing the letter “L” in “Publiques.”
It’s the equivalent of missing the same letter in the word “public” in English.
On Saturday afternoon, CTV News Ottawa spotted about a dozen of the posters all lined up along Bank Street, with the French signs all including the error.
In a statement to CTV News, Sabrina Lemay, the executive director of the Centretown BIA, said, “This was an unintentional translation error that made its way into production. As soon as we became aware of it, we took steps to have it corrected.”
The City of Ottawa says they did not have a part in the creation of the posters.
A City of Ottawa report shows there were 24 complaints about French-language in 2025, 16 of which were related to signage and display errors.
