Life in Morocco was finally published two days ago and we are very happy with that!
But… how come we call it version 1.5 when it’s only two days old?
Merging and translating websites
Because it’s the English version of a French website (O-Maroc.com) that is more than ten years old and it integrates posts that were initially published on a tourism website that was even older (Mezgarne.com).
O-Maroc and Mezgarne had some topics in common, and others totally different. When Mezgarne closed, we wanted to integrate all its content on O-Maroc, a task that is not yet fully completed (there was a lot of content… and some technical developments).
At that time, O-Maroc was French only, targeted to French people and French-speaking people living in Morocco.
Then Covid hit. French groups on Facebook were full of recriminations, arrogance and entitlement. Full of female and male Karen! We got enough of it, and decided to explore other worlds, i.e.. English-speaking groups. It was a relief, as the attitude was totally different.
That’s how the idea of translating O-Maroc in English started. But that was complex. Really complex, as this is far from being a simple WordPress website, we have thousands of lines of custom code that needed to be adapted to a multilingual environment.
We had a small website at hand, planned for our company (if there obvious things in common with O-Maroc, we already decided it would be better to split the corporate website from the information one). As a quick and dirty solution, we published some important translations over there. Nevertheless, that was not a permanent solution, for many technical reasons.
We whipped ourselves up to go faster, adapt our code, select the posts that were the most important to translate. As some of them were ancient (like the one about how to register a company in Morocco), we also had to update information, prices, tax rates, etc.
We finally made it! Life in Morocco is now live with all its intended functionalities.
Differences between a “French” and an “English” speaking website
A French speaking website about Morocco targets mainly (95%) French, Belgium, Swiss people (and Moroccan binationals). We have a very few visitors from Quebec, but our readers mainly came from Europe, a space where all legislations and taxes are similar despite minor differences.
In comparison, the English version of our website is aimed primarily at people living in Anglo-Saxon legal systems. Or to people from any country, any legal system in the world…
Expatriate income tax, family laws, spouse immigration process can be very different. French nationals benefit from a number of facilities in Morocco that are not necessarily available to other nationalities.
We don’t pretend to be experts in these matters for more than 190 countries in the world ! Therefore, in many posts, you’ll find references to British law or US law, when we have the information, or “Europe” and, in some cases, even to France.
If you have specific questions, we can join our efforts and help you with our knowledge of Morocco and your knowledge of your country of origin. Just ask! And if your notice any mistake or something inaccurate, please tell us.
A typo or syntax error? You can select the text and hit Ctrl+Enter to send us a message. Thank you! If this post interested you, maybe you can also leave a comment. We'd love to exchange with you !
