French Interpreter for the Canton Fair in Guangzhou: 100 Profiles List French, 22 Record a French Major — and the Fair Sells an In-Hall Escort at CNY 1,000 a Day

Checked on 25 September 2026. We are Guangzhou Guanri Translation Service Co., Ltd. (广州市贯日翻译服务有限公司), an interpreting company based in Guangzhou. We are not a factory-audit firm, not a law firm, and not the Canton Fair organiser. The escort interpreting this article recommends is the service we sell, so read it the way you would read anything written by a seller. Nothing below is legal advice or compliance advice. Every figure is labelled with its source; where a number comes from our own data rather than from an official document, the sentence says so.

We already have a page on French, from July 2026: French-Chinese Translation for Business, Documents and Francophone Africa Trade. It is mostly about written translation, and its heading told you to look for a native French translator. For interpreting, that advice is not something our records can back: none of our 812 interpreter profiles has a field for native language, so we cannot tell you that anyone on our list is a native speaker. This page is about interpreting at and around the Canton Fair, and it is built on what we can count.

Two counts matter. The Canton Fair sells French interpreting itself: its interpreting page publishes CNY 1,000 a day for an escort interpreter — only inside the exhibition complex, only on fair days, and on a page that carries no date. And our own Guangzhou directory holds 100 profiles that list French, third of fourteen foreign languages. After English and Japanese, that is the most profiles we list for any language. It is also a bench where 82 of the 100 records show no completed project, and where only 22 record a French-language major of any kind. This page shows you what the records do and do not hold.

1. Which line is yours

Read the row that matches you. Every row ends in something you can do, and carries the number you would need to do it. All day counts are measured from 25 September 2026. The badge rules quoted here come from the 139th-session notice of 2 April 2026 — the equivalent notice for the 140th session has not been published as of 23 September 2026 (see §7), so treat the badge lines as last session's rules, which may change. The Fair's rates and booking dates below come from its interpreting page, which carries no publication date (§2). Where a row says to message us, our contact page also lists an email address; if you can write only in French, say so in the first line and we will tell you whether a French speaker can take the thread. The Fair does not say which languages its hotline answers in; its email addresses give you a written channel.

If this is you	What holds today	Then do this	Who decides
You have never attended the Canton Fair, or do not yet hold a buyer badge	This matters for interpreting only if you want an interpreter badged into the halls. The Fair's notice of 30 March 2026 says new buyers must first complete pre-registration and submit the application for the Overseas Buyer Badge before they can apply for accompanying personnel	If you want a Chinese interpreter badged into the halls, pre-register on cantonfair.org.cn first. Interpreting outside the halls does not wait on this; the Fair's own in-hall service is booked with the Fair directly (§2). Questions: 4000-888-999 in China, (0086) 20-28888999 from abroad, info@cantonfair.org.cn	The Canton Fair
You are coming for Phase 1 (15–19 October, 20 days away)	Household appliances, consumer electronics, machinery, vehicles and parts, lighting, hardware, tools, new materials and chemical products — all 19 sections in §4 (our own directory wrongly files chemicals under Phase 2; see §6). On our own lead time (§9), the four-week point passed on 17 September and the two-week point is 1 October, which is itself a public holiday	Message us today on WhatsApp +86 139 2416 6640 with your dates and product, and say in the first line that it is Phase 1. The Fair's own interpreting desk opens for bookings on 30 September, according to its undated page: email ISC@cantonfair.org.cn as well as calling (020)8913-8055	You, once we and the Fair have both answered
You are coming for Phase 2 (23–27 October, 28 days)	Ceramics, kitchenware, home goods, gifts, furniture, building and decorative materials, bathroom fixtures — all 14 sections in §4	Message us on +86 139 2416 6640 with dates and product. On our own lead time your point is today, 25 September, on the four-week reading, 9 October on the two-week one (§9)	Us, on the named interpreter's calendar — we reply the same day, China time, and if we cannot confirm a named interpreter that day we say so and tell you by when
You are coming for Phase 3 (31 October – 4 November, 36 days)	Toys, garments, textiles, shoes, bags, food, medical products, personal care — all 21 sections in §4	Message us on +86 139 2416 6640. Your point is 3 October on the four-week reading, 17 October on the two-week one. Garments and textiles is the specific product group our French profiles declare most — 17 of 100, self-declared (§8)	Us, on the named interpreter's calendar
You need French inside the halls, on fair days	The Fair sells this itself: CNY 800/day booth interpreter, CNY 1,000/day escort interpreter for languages other than English — on an undated page (§2)	Book it with the Fair, not with us. Before the Fair: 30 September – 14 October, (020)8913-8055, ISC@cantonfair.org.cn. During the Fair that line is out of window — use your area's counter: A 86-20-89130395 · B 86-20-89061946 · C 86-20-89074104 · D 86-20-89139941. Pay in CNY at the Buyer Service Centre	The Canton Fair. Their page says interpreter numbers are limited and it is first come, first served
You need French outside the halls — factory visits, hotels, dinners, another province	The Fair's service does not cover any of that (§3). All 100 of our French profiles are registered in Guangzhou	This is the part we sell: +86 139 2416 6640, with dates, city and what the day looks like. Ask for the interpreter by the Ref. number on their directory card; before you agree, we send you what that record holds (§11). For another province, ask whether the named person will travel — travel and accommodation must then be on the quotation. If we say no, use another agency or ask your supplier whether they have a French-speaking salesperson; we will not argue you out of either	Us, for the interpreter — and the answer may be no
You want the same interpreter in the halls and at the factory	The Fair's own interpreter does not leave the complex. Ours enters the halls only on an accompanying-personnel badge: last session's rule needs a PRC resident identity card and, for the interpreter type, a qualification — no CATTI or NAETI on any of our records, 70 French-listing records of the shape of the third route, whether any qualifies being the Fair's call (§7) — with a per-phase quota, applied for at least two calendar days ahead. The 140th-session badge notice also bars anyone who holds an exhibitor badge for the phase or a move-in/move-out badge for the session	Ask us on +86 139 2416 6640 for names whose record matches the third route and who confirm they hold a PRC resident identity card and neither of those badges, and apply before your hall day. If the Fair refuses, split the days: the Fair's service in the halls, ours outside	The Canton Fair, for the badge. Us, for the calendar
You are bringing your own interpreter from France, Belgium, Canada, Côte d'Ivoire or anywhere else, and they hold no PRC resident identity card	On our reading of last session's notice, the accompanying-personnel badge does not exist for them: it is issued to Chinese assistants or interpreters holding a PRC resident identity card	Do not plan around that badge. Ask the Fair directly whether your companion can enter on a buyer badge of their own: 4000-888-999 in China, (0086) 20-28888999 from abroad, info@cantonfair.org.cn — and ask for the answer in writing	The Canton Fair. We do not speak for them
You are a buyer from Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan, or you hold a Chinese passport	Last session's notice says you may apply for an "assistant" badge only — the "interpreter" badge is not open to you	Plan on the Fair's own in-hall service, or on our people working with you outside the halls (+86 139 2416 6640). Confirm the current rule with the Fair on 4000-888-999, (0086) 20-28888999 or info@cantonfair.org.cn before you rely on it	The Canton Fair
You arrive before the opening, or on 20–22 or 28–30 October	No phase is open on those six October days, though the Fair's own booking window (15 October – 4 November) spans them. They are not free days for suppliers: each block is when the phase before moves out and the phase after moves in, so a Phase 2 exhibitor is tied up on both. Before the opening, the Fair's move-in schedule, published on 22 September, has Phase 1 exhibitors building stands from 8 October (7 October in Area D, 5 October for processing machinery). 1 October is China's National Day, a public holiday; the official holiday schedule decides the days around it	Ask each supplier in writing whether they will receive you on the date you want, then book an interpreter for the days they confirm: +86 139 2416 6640	The supplier decides whether to receive you. We decide whether an interpreter is free
You are reading the Fair's official French guide to find your section	The French edition follows the Chinese closely, but on our reading six of its 55 section names are easy to misread — two different phases carry a bathroom name («salle de bains», «salles de bain»), and a bare «Accessoires» sits in Phase 3	Use the table in §4, and copy the Chinese section name into your message when you ask a supplier or the Fair which phase they are in. If a name is still unclear: 4000-888-999, (0086) 20-28888999, info@cantonfair.org.cn	The Canton Fair — it publishes the section list

Three things this table deliberately does not do. It does not give you a travel time to any factory: we hold no measured travel-time data, and we are not going to estimate one for someone who will plan a day around it — ask us for the specific route once you have the address. It does not tell you that you need us: of the eleven rows above, six turn on a decision by the Canton Fair. And it does not cover two readers who are in the body instead: if you need a conference (simultaneous) interpreter, read §5; if you are not travelling and want someone to walk the Fair for you, read the end of §7.

2. The Fair sells interpreting itself: CNY 800–1,000 a day for French, published

The Canton Fair runs its own interpreting service through its Buyer Service Centres. French is one of the ten languages on it. Their page is at cantonfair.org.cn, in Chinese and English; on the link address itself, see §12.

The scope line is the whole story, and it is one sentence:

We provide interpretation service inside the Canton Fair Complex during opening hours of the Fair.

That is the official English text, quoted in full. The Chinese original words it slightly differently: the service is provided by the Buyer Service Centre, and only during the Fair's opening period. The rates are published, and French falls in the "other languages" band:

Rate: English：CNY 600/day/ for booth interpreter (English), CNY 800/day/ for exhibition escort interpreter ; Other languages: CNY 800/day/ for booth interpreter (other languages), CNY 1000/day/ for exhibition escort interpreter (other languages). 【Note: Less than 4 hours of service is charged as half a day, while over 4 hours is charged as a full day.】

Every character inside that quotation is the official English, including the stray full-width colon after "English" and the space before the semicolon. The original sets those four lines as separate paragraphs; we have joined them with single spaces so they read as one block. Payment is on site in CNY at the Buyer Service Centre of Areas A, B, C and D. Reservations outside the Fair's opening period run 30 September to 14 October on (020)8913-8055 and ISC@cantonfair.org.cn. During the Fair, 15 October to 4 November, that number stops taking bookings and seven counters take over, each with its own number or numbers, all on the same email:

Area A, service counter 8-1 — 86-20-89130395
Area B, service counter 11-1 — 86-20-89061946
Area B, Registration Office — 86-20-89130185, 86-20-89130195
Area C, corridor bridge 15.3 — 86-20-89074104
Area C, Registration Office — 86-20-89074105, 86-20-89074106
Area D, service counter 20-5 — 86-20-89139941
Area D, Registration Office — 86-20-89133215, 86-20-89133270

One more detail worth knowing before you plan around this page: it carries no publication date and no revision date. Everything in this section, including the 30 September booking date the countdown in §9 hangs on, rests on a page that does not say when it was last touched. Call the number before you rely on the date.

And a divergence worth knowing about. The Chinese version of that page closes with one calm sentence — interpreter numbers are limited, first come first served. The English version closes with two:

Reminder: Please note that the number of the interpreters is limited; first come, first served.We recommend making your reservation as early as possible!

The second sentence exists only in English. The missing space after "served." is in the original. The more urgent-sounding version is the one that suits a seller, which is why we are pointing out that the Chinese page is the calmer one rather than quoting the English at you as if it were the only text.

3. Where the Fair's line stops — and that is the part we sell

Read the scope sentence again: inside the Canton Fair Complex, during opening hours. Both halves are limits.

Not covered by it, on our reading of that one sentence:

A factory visit in Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan or anywhere else outside the complex.
Anything at your hotel — a follow-up meeting, a sample review, a supper where the real number gets agreed.
Any trip to another province.
The six days when no phase is open: 20, 21 and 22 October, and 28, 29 and 30 October. Those are the changeover days between phases. For an exhibitor they are move-out and move-in days; for you as a buyer they mean there is no hall open to walk into.
The days before the Fair opens. The Fair published the 140th session's move-in schedule on 22 September 2026 (the notice is dated 18 September, in Chinese): Phase 1 exhibitors build their stands from 8 to 13 October in Areas A, B and C, and from 7 to 12 October in Area D, where the processing-machinery section starts on 5 October. On those days Phase 1 suppliers are working in the halls.

Note what that means for the Fair's own booking window. Reservations "during opening hours of the Canton Fair" are described as 15 October to 4 November — a range that includes 21 October and 29 October, on which nothing is open. The window is a booking window, not a statement that the halls are open every day inside it.

So here is the honest division of labour. In the halls, on fair days, the Fair's own desk is the route that does not depend on us: a published rate, a published booking window — and, on its own page, a limited number of interpreters, first come first served. We publish no French rate, so we are not claiming to sit above or below their CNY 1,000. Outside those two limits their service does not reach, and ours can be asked for — with the caveats about our own records that §5 and §6 set out.

4. The dates and the sections — and six French names to read with care

The 2026 Attendance Guide for Overseas Buyers exists in ten languages — Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. The French edition, titled «Guide de participation à l'intention des acheteurs étrangers – Foire de Canton 2026 (Français)», is a four-page PDF listed on the guide's own page. It has no text layer, so nothing in it can be copied and pasted; on 25 September 2026 we rendered its section page as an image and read it by hand, and matched it row by row against the Chinese and English editions of the same page. The three list the same 55 rows in the same order.

The French edition reads close to the Chinese. Hardware is «Quincaillerie», tools are «Outillage», bags are «Sacs et valises», and new materials and chemicals are «Nouveaux matériaux et produits chimiques», in Phase 1 where they belong. On six rows, though, the French words are easy to misread. The last column is our reading, not an official statement:

Phase, row	Chinese original	Official English	Official French	What the French may suggest to a reader
Phase 1, row 4	加工机械设备	Processing Machinery Equipment	Machines de traitement	The word «traitement» is often read as treatment — water treatment, surface treatment. The Chinese and English mean machinery for processing materials. This is also the section whose move-in starts on 5 October
Phase 2, row 11	编织及藤铁工艺品	Weaving, Rattan and Iron Products	Produits tissés, en rotin et en fer	«Tissé» usually describes woven fabric, so a textile buyer may stop here. The Chinese and English mean woven, rattan and iron craft goods; textiles and fabrics are Phase 3
Phase 2, row 13	卫浴设备	Sanitary and Bathroom Equipment	Équipement de salle de bains	Bathroom fixtures. This is the Phase 2 bathroom row
Phase 3, row 8	服装饰物及配件	Fashion Accessories and Fittings	Accessoires	The Chinese and English say clothing and fashion accessories; the bare French word does not. Car parts are not here — 汽车配件 (Vehicle Spare Parts) is Phase 1; for phone or other accessories, ask which section
Phase 3, row 19	浴室用品	Toiletries	Produits pour les salles de bain	Bathroom products: a second bathroom name — «salles de bain» — in a different phase from the one above
Phase 3, row 21	乡村振兴特色产品	Traditional Chinese Specialties	Produits spéciaux de redressement des campagnes	A word-for-word rendering of a Chinese policy term, "rural revitalisation". The official English calls the same row Traditional Chinese Specialties; a buyer looking for regional food or craft specialties may not recognise the French

If you buy toilets, basins or other goods in the 卫浴设备 section, you are Phase 2, 23–27 October — not Phase 3, even though the Phase 3 list also carries «Produits pour les salles de bain». If your product sits between a fixture and a bathroom product, ask the Fair or your supplier which of the two sections it is in, and put the Chinese characters from the second column into the message: the Chinese is the original the other editions translate. On the remaining 49 rows we did not find another French name that, on our reading, is likely to send a buyer to a different phase; a few are narrower than the Chinese — «Automobiles» for 车辆 (vehicles), «Sports et loisirs» without the travel products — but each sits in the same phase as the goods it names. One more to check if you buy eyewear: 钟表眼镜 is «Horloges, montres et instruments optiques», with no word for glasses, and it is Phase 2, not Phase 3's «Accessoires».

Two official documents disagree slightly on the list itself, so here is exactly what we took from each. The section-to-phase assignment comes from Attachment 1 to the 140th-session booth application notice, which is specific to this session and lists 54 sections (19 / 14 / 21). The dates come from the Attendance Guide, which is a general 2026 document printing April and October side by side and lists 55 sections (19 / 15 / 21). The extra line is in Phase 2: Prefabricated House and Courtyard Facilities («Logements modulaires et équipements de jardin» in the French edition). It is printed below with a mark, because Attachment 1 does not list it for the 140th session. The names and running order below follow the English edition of the guide; the Chinese version of this article follows Attachment 1.

Phase	Dates, 140th session	Sections (Attachment 1)	Days from 25 September
Phase 1	15–19 October 2026	19	20
Phase 2	23–27 October 2026	14	28
Phase 3	31 October – 4 November 2026	21	36

Phase 1 — Household Electrical Appliances; Consumer Electronics and Information Products; Industrial Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing; Processing Machinery Equipment; Power Machinery and Electric Power; General Machinery and Mechanical Basic Parts; Construction Machinery; Agricultural Machinery; New Materials and Chemical Products; New Energy Vehicles and Smart Mobility; Vehicles; Vehicle Spare Parts; Motorcycles; Bicycles; Lighting Equipment; Electronic and Electrical Products; New Energy Resources; Hardware; Tools.

Phase 2 — General Ceramics; Kitchenware and Tableware; Household Items; Glass Artware; Home Decorations; Gardening Products; Festival Products; Gifts and Premiums; Clocks, Watches and Optical Instruments; Art Ceramics; Weaving, Rattan and Iron Products; Building and Decorative Materials; Sanitary and Bathroom Equipment; Furniture; Prefabricated House and Courtyard Facilities (guide only — not in Attachment 1 for this session).

Phase 3 — Toys; Children, Baby and Maternity Products; Kids' Wear; Men and Women's Clothing; Underwear; Sports and Casual Wear; Furs, Leather, Downs and Related Products; Fashion Accessories and Fittings; Textile Raw Materials and Fabrics; Shoes; Cases and Bags; Home Textiles; Carpets and Tapestries; Office Supplies; Medicines, Health Products and Medical Devices; Food; Sports, Travel and Recreation Products; Personal Care Products; Toiletries; Pet Products and Food; Traditional Chinese Specialties.

The English edition carries a caveat at the foot of that page. This is our transcription of the English image; the French box, headed «Note», says the same thing:

Notice: The Canton Fair will also feature the Service Robots Zone, the Intelligent Healthcare Zone and other innovations. Please refer to Canton Fair official website for the latest updates of section and phase arrangements.

Two sentences after the opening word. If your product is chemicals or new materials, read that Phase 1 line twice: it is in the first phase, 15–19 October. Our own interpreter directory currently files chemicals under Phase 2 — in its French, Chinese and English versions alike — which is wrong; more on that in §6.

5. How many French-listing profiles we have: 100 — and what the records actually say

Our public Guangzhou interpreter directory holds 812 profiles, every one of them registered in Guangzhou. Counting the foreign languages listed across those profiles:

English 631, Japanese 248, French 100, Spanish 65, Russian 56, Korean 51, German 32, Italian 17, Vietnamese 8, Arabic 7, Thai 6, Indonesian 4, Turkish 3, Portuguese 1.

French is third of fourteen: 100 of 812 profiles, 12.3%. Here is what the 100 records hold, including the fields a seller would rather leave out. All of it is our own data, counted on 25 September 2026:

Completed projects on record: zero for 82 of the 100. The other 18 hold 174 projects between them, and the three busiest profiles hold 107 of those — one profile alone holds 69.
Status labels are ours, and they follow that count. 18 profiles carry "gold" and 82 carry "verified". Every gold profile has at least one completed project on record; no verified profile has any. The label is not a qualification check.
Years of experience: not recorded on any of the 100. No photographs. Names on file are partly masked. There is no field for native language, and none for which French — from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, West Africa or anywhere else — a person learned or works in.
Simultaneous interpreting: 21 profiles are tagged for it, and 14 of the 21 show zero completed projects. The other 79 are tagged for business escort and trade fairs only — tags that sit on all 812 profiles and tell you nothing specific.
English as well as French: 89 of the 100. Eleven list French and Chinese only.
Day rate: not published on any of them. All 812 profiles are quote-only.

Education is where the records say most, and for French it says something a seller would rather not print. We classified all 100 by the Chinese card, which is the source record:

20 record a school in the Chinese mainland and a French-language major.
50 record a Chinese mainland school and another foreign-language major — almost all of them English, business English, English translation or interpreting.
8 record a Chinese mainland school and a different major, or none.
9 record a school abroad and no mainland school: seven in France or Belgium, one in the United Kingdom, one in New Zealand.
13 record no school at all.

Put the other way round: 22 of the 100 record a French-language major of any kind (the 20, one of the nine who studied abroad, and one of the 13 with no school), and 8 record a school in France or Belgium. Allowing for the one profile that is in both, 29 records show either. 71 records show neither. Across the whole directory file, the French proficiency tests we searched for — TCF, TEF, DELF, DALF and the Chinese French-major band tests — appear zero times; the English equivalents (TEM-4/8, CET-4/6) sit on 53 of the 100 French profiles.

That does not mean the 71 cannot speak French. It means that, for 70 of them, the only thing on the record that says French is the language tag the interpreter chose; the 71st records a Sino-French cooperative trade programme, not a French major. The record behind the tag is the part to check.

Three consequences, stated plainly:

Ask for the person, not the language. 100 profiles means there may be more than one name for your date, but we hold no data on how often that is true, and 82 of the records have no completed project to show. Ask for the Ref. number on the directory card, and we send you what that record holds before you agree. If French matters more to your day than English, ask for names among the 29 whose record shows French study; if the variety of French matters to you, ask the named person directly. If you want to hear the person speak French before you book, ask for it — whether that can be arranged depends on the person, and we will tell you.
There is no tested French conference team behind the escort bench. 21 tagged profiles is enough people on paper for two-per-booth simultaneous interpreting, which is the staffing our own FAQ describes, and seven of the 21 have completed projects on record. But 19 of the 21 record neither a French major nor a school in France or Belgium — most record an English major. If your booking is a conference rather than a fair, say so first, and expect us to tell you whether the answer is yes.
We publish no price for French. Our FAQ says consecutive and escort interpreting "start at ¥200 per hour or ¥800 per full day, depending on language pair and subject" — that is a general floor, not a French price. Note that CNY 800 a day appears twice in this article for two unrelated things: the Fair's booth-interpreter rate for non-English languages, and the bottom of our own general escort range. Neither is a quotation for French, and we are not going to pretend we undercut a CNY 1,000 we have not quoted against.

6. And our own pages — the French ones included — carry errors of their own

Our French directory, /m/fr/interpreters/, works: we probed the directory in nine languages on 25 September 2026 and eight return 200 (Portuguese returns 404). That is the good news. The rest of this section is not all good.

The phase summary is wrong. The French directory page lists «chimie et matériaux» (chemicals and materials) under Phase 2, 23–27 October. The official Attachment 1, and row 9 of the French guide's own Phase 1 list («Nouveaux matériaux et produits chimiques»), put new materials and chemical products in Phase 1. Our Chinese and English directory pages carry the same error, checked the same day. A chemicals buyer who plans travel from our page would arrive eight days late.

The French cards drop the strongest French evidence we hold. We compared the Chinese, English and French cards of every French-listing profile:

All 10 French-listing profiles that name a school abroad — the eight in France or Belgium, plus Warwick and Massey — lose that school on the French card, and on every other language card too. The Sorbonne, Poitiers, Brest, Liège: none of it is visible to a French reader. The Chinese card is the only place it shows.
Of the 87 French-listing profiles that record a school on the Chinese card, 28 lose it on the French card; nine of those ten are among them — the tenth keeps its Chinese school on the French card and loses only Lyon.
研究生 (postgraduate study) is rendered «études supérieures» on the French card. On our reading, in France and Belgium that phrase usually means higher education in general, so a postgraduate reads as someone who went to university; in Quebec it does mean graduate studies. It affects 12 French profiles, and 79 across the directory. The other levels come through sensibly: 本科 «licence», 硕士 «master», 博士 «doctorat», and 大专 (a college diploma) «BTS/DUT».
Not counting school names and test codes, 38 entries on 38 French cards are left in English — "English" as a major on 18 cards where 15 others say «anglais», "French" on three where 14 others say «français», and "Business English", "English Translation", "Economics" and similar on the rest.
On four French-listing profiles, the Chinese card carries text that is not part of the education record: 全职 ("full-time") after the school name on two, and on two more a note that the phone number on file was wrong (号码有误, 号码错误). Ten profiles across the directory carry text of this kind. The phone notes are our own internal notes, and they should not be on a public page. We do not know whether the phone note is still true, which is one more reason commitment 1 in §11 exists.

Our FAQ says different things in different languages. We compared the Chinese, English and French FAQ pages on 25 September 2026. Here is what differs, including the items that cost us to admit:

The Chinese and English pages advertise 45 answers; the French page advertises 51.
On booking lead time, the Chinese and English answers are two sentences. The French answer has a third: urgent bookings of less than one week carry a 30–50% surcharge, subject to availability. That sentence is on the French page only. The French answer also softens the common-pair promise from "usually" to «souvent» (often).
On offices, the Chinese page says only that we are in Guangzhou; the English page says we maintain branch offices across China; the French page says seven branches, names Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen among them, and prints a street address — which is not the address on our own contact pages. If you want to visit us, use the contact-page address and call first, as that page asks.
On conference interpreters the French page says «de niveau AIIC» where the Chinese and English pages say only "senior and experienced"; on free samples the French page offers a free 200-character sample on jobs over 5,000 characters where the English says we generally do not offer free trials; on the apostille the French page says we handle the apostille service where the English says the apostille itself is issued by the government authority and not by us; on equipment the French page claims ISO-standard booths and names Bosch and Sennheiser where the Chinese and English pages list Bosch / Philips receivers and no ISO standard.
All three pages list French among the languages we staff for conference interpreting, two interpreters per booth. That rests on the 21 tagged profiles in §5, 19 of which record neither French study nor a school in France or Belgium.

We are not telling you that any interpreter holds AIIC membership, and the Chinese and English wording is the one we stand behind. On the surcharge: we are not announcing that the 30–50% rush fee applies to readers of the Chinese and English pages, because those pages do not say it. If you read it on the French page, that is what the French page says; whether it applies to your booking will show on your quotation as its own line, or it does not apply at all. You should not have to catch that kind of thing yourself — commitment 4 in §11 is our side of it.

7. If you bring your own interpreter, or want a Chinese one badged

For the 139th session, the Fair published a notice on 2 April 2026 covering badges for people accompanying overseas buyers, and opened applications on 3 April — twelve days before that session's first phase. The equivalent notice for the 140th session has not appeared. We pulled 1,200 rows of the Fair's own content stream on 25 September 2026 — continuous from 3 November 2025 to 23 September 2026 across 182 distinct publication dates — and ran a positive control: the 139th notice of 2 April 2026 is in that pull, in both Chinese and English, so the method finds this kind of document when it exists. We searched titles, not article bodies. The 140th one is not there yet. What follows is last session's rule, and it may change; we are not going to guess when the new one lands.

The first sentence decides who this is even about: the badge is for Chinese assistants or interpreters of overseas buyers, holding a People's Republic of China resident identity card. If you are flying in from Paris, Brussels, Montreal or Abidjan with your own French-speaking assistant, this route is not narrow for them — on our reading of that sentence, it does not exist for them.

Only the buyer can start the application, it is made through the Fair's own website and Buyer Service System, and it must go in at least two calendar days ahead. A new buyer has to have completed pre-registration and submitted their own Overseas Buyer Badge application first. There are two types, and the interpreter type has a qualification test:

III. Types of Accompanying Personnel Accompanying personnel are divided into“assistants”and“interpreters.”Interpreters are additionally required to submit proof of translation qualifications (China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters (CATTI), National Accreditation Examinations for Translators and Interpreters (NAETI), or a graduation certificate in a foreign language major from a higher education institution in the Chinese mainland).

Section III is two sentences in the official English and both are quoted; the heading and the body are joined here by a single space where the original had a line break, and the curly quotation marks and the missing spaces around them are the original's. Apply it to our French bench and the answer is mixed:

Searching the whole of our interpreter data file — 7,266,840 bytes, 5,537,346 characters — the strings CATTI and NAETI appear zero times. The first two routes are not in our records for anyone.
The third route asks for a foreign-language major, not a French one. 70 French-listing profiles record a Chinese mainland school and a foreign-language major — 20 of them French, 50 another foreign language, mostly English — so their records have the shape the third route describes. Two of the 70 record a college diploma (大专), and eleven name a school whose name is not written as a university; both college-diploma profiles are among the eleven. Whether any record is a qualifying graduation certificate — and whether the school counts as a higher education institution — is the Fair's decision, not ours.
The nine profiles whose only school is abroad — seven of them in France or Belgium — do not match the third route as written, which names an institution in the Chinese mainland. We do not know how the Fair treats a foreign qualification, and we are not going to guess.

Note what that means: for a badge, seven of the eight records that show study in France or Belgium do not fit the route, and 50 of the 70 records that do fit the route's shape rest on a major other than French.

The quota and the exclusions:

IV. Quota Each buyer may apply for up to 2 accompanying personnel per phase, with a maximum of one interpreter and one assistant each.Buyers from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan as well as those holding a Chinese passport are not eligible to apply for an interpreter badge and can only apply for an assistant badge.

Section IV is two sentences and both are quoted; the heading is joined by a single space, and the missing space after "each." is the original's. Note that the quota is per phase: if you are attending two phases, ask the Fair whether that means two applications.

The fee was CNY 300 per day plus a CNY 50 administrative fee, non-refundable once the badge has been scanned by an entry gate. For a full five-day phase that is CNY 1,550 in badge alone, on our reading that the CNY 50 is charged once, before the interpreter's own fee. Two more provisions worth knowing: if an accompanying person's badge record from previous sessions shows irregularities, an alert is triggered and extra documents must be submitted for review — so leave more than the two-day minimum; and anyone who already holds an exhibitor or exhibitor-representative badge for the same phase, who obtained a move-in/move-out badge for the session, or who was rejected for an exhibitor badge, cannot apply. Those three exclusions are already in print for this session, in slightly different wording: the Fair's badge notice for exhibitors and service providers (our English for 《第140届广交会参展、服务单位办证工作通告》), dated 22 September 2026 and published in Chinese on 23 September, repeats them for the 140th session and names the overseas buyer's accompanying-personnel badge among the badges they bar (our reading of the Chinese). The same notice sets a one-person, one-badge-per-phase rule and a warning flag for anyone with five or more badge records under different badge types or companies over the last six sessions; a flagged person who fails review may not apply for any badge this session. An interpreter badged by different buyers session after session could be caught by that, on our reading. Ask the named interpreter about their badge history, and if it matters, ask the Fair.

And then there is the sentence we have to read against ourselves:

Buyers and their accompanying personnel must ensure a genuine accompanying relationship.

Section VIII runs to four sentences in the official English; this is the first, and the other three set out what happens if it is breached and how to speed the application up. The Chinese original packs the same section into two sentences, and that difference in sentence breaks belongs to the English text, not to us. The notice does not define "genuine accompanying relationship". We sell commercially hired interpreters — which is exactly the thing that phrase might or might not be aimed at. We do not know where the Fair draws that line, and we are not going to guess in a page that sells you the service. If it matters to you, ask them before you submit: 4000-888-999 inside China, (0086) 20-28888999 from abroad, info@cantonfair.org.cn, and ask for the reply in writing (that is practical advice, not legal advice about what counts as evidence). The consequences the notice sets out for getting it wrong are confiscation of both badges, removal from the venue, blacklisting and no refund.

One more thing this route cannot do for you: only a buyer can initiate it, so it is no use if you are not travelling and want someone to walk the Fair on your behalf. Ask the Fair on the numbers above. If what you need is French on a phone or video call with a supplier, message us on the WhatsApp number in §11 as for any other booking: our FAQ says we do remote interpreting, but none of our 812 profiles records whether the person has done it, so ask the named person.

8. Choosing among the 100, and when to fall back to English

Each profile declares which Canton Fair product categories the interpreter is comfortable with. These are self-declared, not tested. Across the 100 French profiles:

General trade 54, garments and textiles 17, building and home 14, medical and health 14, electronics and electrical 13, food and drink 11, machinery and auto 10, cosmetics and daily chemicals 7, chemicals and materials 6, hardware and tools 3, logistics 3. Twenty-five profiles declare none.

Read that against the phases in §4. A Phase 3 garment buyer has the widest choice: 17 profiles. A Phase 1 buyer of machinery has ten declaring machinery and auto and three declaring hardware and tools. If your day is a technical audit, tell us the product first and ask which of the names has declared it — and then ask the person, because a declared category is a statement, not a test.

The fallback is English, and it is wide: 631 of our 812 profiles list English, and 89 of the 100 French profiles list both — useful when one day moves between two languages — and 45 of the 100 French profiles record an English-type major with no French major beside it. The Fair's own rate card is cheaper in English too — CNY 600 a day for a booth interpreter and CNY 800 for an escort, against CNY 800 and CNY 1,000 for other languages. If your English is workable for negotiation, that route is cheaper at the Fair's desk and wider on our list. We are saying so even though it points you away from a French booking with us.

One practical note, because it comes up every session: one interpreter cannot cover two booths at once, and a day split between the complex and a factory in another city is one person's whole day. Plan people per simultaneous conversation, not per company.

9. Our own lead time, both readings, counted in days

Our FAQ answers the booking-lead-time question in all three languages. The English version:

For rare language pairs or large conferences, book 4-8 weeks ahead. Common pairs (Chinese↔English/Japanese/Korean) can usually be scheduled 1-2 weeks ahead.

Two sentences, quoted in full from our own page. French is on neither list. With 100 profiles it is not scarce for us on paper, but our FAQ does not call it a common pair either, and §5 shows how much thinner the record is than the headcount. So here are both readings, rather than the one that suits a seller:

Read as a common pair, one to two weeks: Phase 1's two-week point is 1 October, six days from now. Phase 2's is 9 October, Phase 3's 17 October.
Read as a rare pair, four weeks at the floor: Phase 1's point fell on 17 September, eight days ago. Phase 2's falls today, 25 September. Phase 3's on 3 October, eight days from now.
At the eight-week end of that band, all three are gone — Phase 1 by 36 days, Phase 2 by 28, Phase 3 by 20.
Phases open in 20, 28 and 36 days. The Fair's own reservation line for the non-fair period opens in 5 days, on 30 September, and closes on 14 October — dates from its undated page.

That is the entire basis for any urgency in this article. Not "interpreters get booked up" — a count of days against a number we published before you arrived.

If you are past the point that applies to you: message us on WhatsApp at +86 139 2416 6640 or on WeChat (ID Saralee93), or through the contact page, and say so in the first line. We reply the same day, China time. If we cannot confirm a named interpreter by then, we say so and tell you by when we will; if no one is free, we say no rather than sell you a substitute whose record you have not seen. Then, from 30 September, write to ISC@cantonfair.org.cn as well as calling (020)8913-8055 — the page does not say whether that line is staffed on public holidays — because their in-hall service is the route that does not depend on us at all.

10. What we could not find out, and are not going to pretend we did

For our Arabic article of 21 September we built a section out of our Canton Fair exhibitor directory — 26,270 companies — by scanning company names, product categories and keywords for self-declared market words. We ran the same method for the French-speaking world with 45 terms: France, the French language and French script, French style, Paris, Lyon, Marseille, French overseas territories, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco, Canada, Quebec, Montreal, Africa and four of its regions, "Francophone Africa", and twenty-four terms for twenty-three African and Caribbean countries (Côte d'Ivoire under two Chinese names), from Morocco and Senegal to Madagascar and Haiti. Every hit is printed in our working file; we read all of them.

What survives:

5 exhibitors out of 26,270 list a place on its own as a keyword: two list Africa, two list Canada, one lists Morocco. Neither Africa nor Canada is a French-speaking market as a whole, so even these five do not tell you about French speakers.
3 exhibitor records carry a China–Africa trade port in the company name; one of them is a branch of another.
6 list a product named for Africa: African wax cloth or wax-print fabric (three companies), African candles (two) and an exercise book named for Africa (one).
8 use a place as a product style: French design, a French easel, French furniture, a French-door refrigerator, a French window, a Canadian-style fence, Swiss candy and Moroccan tea.
10 list a stationery product called 法文本. We have not checked what that name denotes, and we do not count it as a market.
Everything else was a coincidence of characters — 马赛 is the first half of 马赛克, mosaic (44 hits), and 里昂 sits inside the Chinese word for Freon. France, the French language, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Quebec, and every French-speaking African country except Morocco appear zero times as a stand-alone keyword.

That is not a market map, and it is their marketing copy, not a customer list. So we are not going to tell you what French-speaking buyers typically buy at the Canton Fair.

In the Fair's own 1,200-row content stream described in §7, zero titles mention France or the French language, in Chinese or in English, and zero mention Belgium. Switzerland appears in two titles, one of them the Fair's report on a 140th-session promotion event in Zurich on 10 July; Morocco in one, a 139th–140th promotion event there; Africa in two Chinese and three English titles, one of them the Fair's newsletter saying the 140th session's global roadshow began with the African Union as its first stop. Beyond the date and place of the Zurich event, we are not reporting on what those items say.

We also probed whether official French web versions exist of four of the documents this article leans on, by requesting each content number with the suffix FR. All return empty, while the same numbers with EN return the English version for three of the four (the fourth is the Chinese application-opening notice as reposted on 9 April; the original of 30 March has its English version under its own number, and that is the one we used). The requests are logged to file. Note the narrow shape of that claim: those web pages have no French version; the printed guide in §4 does have one.

11. How to reach us, and what we put in writing before you pay

French, or English for the days French cannot be covered — either way:

WhatsApp +86 139 2416 6640 (direct link); on WeChat our contact page lists Saralee93.
Or the contact page.
To see who is actually on file: the interpreter directory. One warning about that page, and it is ours: its phase summary files chemicals and materials under Phase 2 while the official Attachment 1 puts new materials and chemical products in Phase 1. Read the phases from §4, not from our page, until we have fixed it.
And our FAQ — with the warning from §6 attached: its conference-interpreting answer lists French on the strength of 21 tagged profiles, 19 of which record neither French study nor a school in France or Belgium.

Because §6 says you should not have to police our own pages, here is what we commit to putting in the confirmation before you pay anything, without you having to ask:

The interpreter by name and Ref. number, with the education, languages and completed-project count their record actually holds — including whether that record shows any French study — and confirmation that the named person has told us they are free on the dates you booked.
How we notify you if that person has to be replaced, your right to refuse the replacement and cancel, and what happens to anything you have already paid if you do.
The cancellation and rescheduling terms, in full — including what happens to hall days you booked with us if the Fair refuses the badge.
The quotation, with any rush surcharge shown as its own line rather than folded into the day rate, and with the overtime rate, any travel and accommodation, invoice tax and who pays the Fair's badge fee each stated — and nothing on your invoice that was not on the quotation you accepted. If a surcharge is not on the quotation, we do not charge it. That is our commitment to you, not a reading of anyone's law.
For the named interpreter, which route of the badge rule their record matches on paper, and whether they have confirmed to us that they hold a PRC resident identity card and no exhibitor or move-in/move-out badge for this session — with the plain statement that whether a badge is issued is the Fair's decision. We never answer yes on the Fair's behalf.

If you do not receive those five things before you are asked to pay, that is our failure, not an oversight you need to chase. The two earlier articles in this series are how to hire an interpreter for the Canton Fair and the badge rules.

12. Sources

Canton Fair Interpretation Service, official page, Chinese and English, contentNo 802506534755274752 / 802506534755274752EN. Ten service languages including French; rates; booking windows; seven in-fair counters. No publication date and no revision date on the page. Retrieved 25 September 2026. The Fair's site is a single-page application, so a link address does not by itself fix which language or which document you get: the stable identifiers are the content numbers, and we retrieved every text below through the site's own content interface using them.
2026 Attendance Guide for Overseas Buyers of the Canton Fair, contentNo 598494791797825536 (Chinese page dated 2 March 2026) and 598494791797825536EN (English page dated 30 July 2026). Ten language PDFs; the French edition was read by hand from a rendering on 25 September 2026, the Chinese edition on 23 September and the English edition on 21 September. Customer contact printed in the guide: 4000-888-999 in China, 86-20-28-888-999 from abroad, info@cantonfair.org.cn.
Attachment 1 to the 140th-session export-exhibition booth application notice (5 May 2026): section-to-phase table, 54 sections, 19 / 14 / 21.
《关于第140届广交会筹展相关工作安排的通知》 (notice on the 140th-session move-in arrangements; English title ours), contentNo def556d4bf294d6c8b4ab65b8b208c58, dated 18 September and published 22 September 2026, with its Attachment 1 schedule table; and 《第140届广交会参展、服务单位办证工作通告》 (140th-session badge notice for exhibitors and service providers; English title ours), contentNo 65d6b41c858a4c59a021512259cf3a03, dated 22 September and published 23 September 2026. Both in Chinese; translations of them here are ours.
Notice on Badge Application for Personnel Accompanying Overseas Buyers for the 139th Canton Fair, 2 April 2026, contentNo 1003583666053890048 and 1003583666053890048EN, together with the application-opening notice of 30 March 2026, contentNo 1004624788297474048 and 1004624788297474048EN (reposted in Chinese on 9 April as 1006452879969927168). Quoted above for sections III, IV and VIII. The 140th-session equivalent had not been published as of 23 September 2026.
Our own data: the Guangzhou interpreter directory (812 profiles, counted 25 September 2026) and the Canton Fair exhibitor directory (26,270 companies, built from the 139th-session exhibitor list). Both are our records, not official registers.
Our own pages: the FAQ in Chinese, English and French, the contact pages, and the HTTP status probe of the interpreter directory in nine languages, all as at 25 September 2026.