Hello Jo,
Unfortunately, it isn't as simple as you'd hoped. Also, please be careful not to mix your concepts. Having Oracle Apps present to users in French, and having the French HR Legislative packs in place are two different and independent things. As you are a single business group implementation, and the use of a particular legislation is defined at the business group level (anyone advise whether this has changed in R12?), you can't use both the French and UK legislation packs in a single business group.
A further thing to bear in mind is that if your company is employing personnel in France, and operates a French legislated business, then your company will have many specific government legislative reporting requirements. If these aren't catered for by your payroll provider, then you will probably need to manage them directly in HR. Unfortunately, these requirements can't be managed through Oracle HR unless you do operate a French business group, and French legislation.
Having said that, you can use multiple languages, (without using the French Legislative packs) and the application will present to a user in the language of their choice. Essentially, there are three stages that need to be gone through...
1. Ensure the database is multi-lingual -- I.e. is has the relevant patches in place for the French language -- and if not obtain the required database patches from Oracle and have your DBA install them.
2a. If the database isn't multi-lingual, then your Apps installation will not be either. Again, this involves getting the applicable patches from Oracle, and having them applied.
N.B. In both of the above cases, all relevant patches are available from Metalink.
2b. In conjunction with the above, you will probably need to change some Apps configuration at the FND/APPS/APPLSYS level.
3. Once all necessary patches and configuration actions have been applied, then your users will be able to select the language they want the application presented in through user level profile options, as well as through the preferences option in the self-service forms.
N.B. When applying any patches to your Apps in future, please be aware that you may need to get separate versions of the patch for each installed language.
There are several further points to be aware of...
1. The selection of a language by a user applies for the user, regardless of the responsibility they are using.
2. Customer data is NOT translated by the application of language packs. It is presented in whatever language it was entered. However, seeded data generally is.
3. Not everything in HR (or other functional areas) is translated. This particularly applies to flexfields, value set, lookups, etc. (except for seeded information), as these are customer data. Oracle provides a translation option where you can configure the flexfield names, values, etc. in multiple languages. This is available through the icon that looks like a globe at the top of your Apps window when in professional forms.
N.B. As regards the globe icon mentioned above, it only works when you have multiple languages installed and operating, otherwise you will get a message saying "Only one language is installed". If you are in a form which doesn't support the creation of values in multiple languages the icon is greyed out.
Regards,
Peter.