I've tried your suggestion of making the query more specific with:I might have misled you here, sorry. I've given that code and link to show the way one can use the DataConnection class - this is, of course, not a solution.
... but am still getting the error message on the French page (but not on the English one):
As to your issue, I still argue that unless you "translate" the page, you want be able to work with it in that language because there is no entry for that page in the localized data store. When translated, it is added as "unpublished" first but it does start its existence in your second localization.