OBJECTIVES:No measures of health-related absenteeism and presenteeism have been validated for use in French-speaking Canada. It is important to understand how illness affects an employee’s productivity and therefore an organization’s profitability; when ill, an employee may take a sick day (absenteeism) or attend work despite the illness and experience a loss of work efficiency (presenteeism).  The WPAI-GH, a leading measure of these work productivity indicators, has not yet been tested in French Canada to test for both clarity of translation and item comprehension. Before using a French translation of an available English-language questionnaire, the linguistic validity of this new version must be established to ensure its conceptual equivalence to the original as well as its cultural appropriateness.   The objective of this study was to evaluate the linguistic validity of the Canadian French version of the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire, General Health Version (WPAI:GH).METHODS:A Canadian French translation of the US English WPAI:GH was created through a reiterative process of creating harmonized forward and back translations by independent translators.  French-speaking subjects residing in Canada self-administered the WPAI:GH and were subsequently debriefed by a bilingual (French-English) interviewer.  RESULTS:Thirty French-Canadian subjects were interviewed, all of whom were currently employed at the time of the interview.  The group was stratified by educational level, including an equal number of participants both with and without a high school degree. The WPAI:GH item comprehension rate was 97.2%; no response revisions were offered by any of the subjects.  Responses to hypothetical scenarios indicated that the French for Canada language version adequately differentiates sick time taken for health and non-health reasons and between absenteeism and presenteeism.CONCLUSIONS:Linguistic validity of the French for Canada translation of the WPAI:GH was established among a diverse French Canadian population, including those with minimal education.