Introduction We all speak, whether with thundering silences, gestural signs or words. The latter play such an important role in our lives that, according to Khalil Gibran, we are “lines written on water1”. In most cases, the words we speak create more than one language, hence the idea of ​​bilingualism or multilingualism. By the way, bilingualism and multilingualism are both key elements of translation, on an international scale. As François Grin writes in Translation and the dynamics of multilingualism2, translation "emerges from multilingual contexts and therefore depends on the latter3". Since they play a key role in the link between bilingualism and translation, language policies will be analyzed in the following pages. In this regard, Donna Patrick writes, in her article5, that bilingual practices “shape new social identities and new ways of interacting socially, culturally, politically and economically6”, to which Monica Heller responds in her article7. While Patrick speaks of a globalized perspective on the topic, Heller writes that bilingualism is “centrally linked to the construction of discourses of state and nation, and is therefore linked to the regulation of the economy. This article will reveal, later, that, in practice, bilingualism is often seen as a pipe dream. The federal government led by Trudeau established the Official Languages ​​Act in 1969. While giving “statutory recognition to Canada's linguistic duality17,” it nevertheless “did not stop short of setting national targets for bilingualism18,” which were set 20 years later, when the law was redefined by Parliament. The points of redefinition included “the equality of English and French in federal institutions, especially with regard to the provision of services to the public, and the commitment to develop and strengthen the Anglophone and Francophone minority communities, as well as to promote the two official languages ​​within Canada”.