Quebec Cracks Down On Translated Videogames 261
Thanks to VE3D for their story revealing that the Quebec government is cracking down on videogames without complete French-language packaging, meaning that game stores in Quebec are having to return or amend significant portions of their stock. The article says that "...the likes of Electronic Arts, Sony and Microsoft have been following this law for sometime, but everyone else has ignored it", and a game store worker on the Gaming-Age forums indicates stores "...can't sell anything that doesn't have a French cover", so this new enforcement means that "...the cover that says 'Only on Xbox' must read 'Seulement sur Xbox'."
Quite right (Score:1, Insightful)
good move. (Score:1, Insightful)
this will force more company to actually complete the localization process. a good move as far as i'm concerned.
Re:Arrogance (Score:4, Insightful)
Quebec is the only French speaking state or province in North America. The 5 million French speakers in Quebec are surrounded by 300+ million English speakers in Canada and the US. People in Quebec worry that French will disappear in a generation, making Quebec just another English speaking part of North America and losing (or at least muting) a distict culture. So they pass laws encouraging the use of French (the law in question here applies to much more than video game sales). Personally, I think their fears of being assimilated are understandable.
Re:Yeah but... (Score:2, Insightful)
However, I am not from Canada, so I really have no say in such a matter.
Quit whining... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not going to defend the status quo in Quebec or the shaky relationship they have with the rest of Canada. Those struggles are up to the the Canadians to figure out.
HOWEVER, I will defend the right of the Quebecois government to uphold their laws and the laws of Canada. Those laws were put in place for a reason, a legitimate reason, and, being an American who lives in Detroit and travels to Canada (including Montreal) quite frequently, I think it is an imperfect, but workable, solution to the social and cultural issues Canada faces.
As for the software publishers:
Everyone else can translate their packages for the Canadian market. You can, too. It just isn't that hard of an undertaking. My suggestion is that the publishers take a hint from many of the DVDs sold in Canada: use reversible cover inserts in the keep cases. One side is Canadian English, one is Quebecois French.
Re:Quite right (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Arrogance (Score:2, Insightful)
Not simply in the sense that uprooting yourself and moving to a different country is a difficult, and in some senses risky, proposition. Rather, French as spoken in Canada, and French as spoken in France are such different 'dialects' that they border on speaking different languages...
At least, that's what my obsessed with linguistics, raised on the Canadian border, lived a few years in France fiance says on the matter... And given that she speaks both Quebecois French, and actual French, I'd say she's probably right.
Quite wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Bingo, problem solved -- without adding more bureaucracy to the system. "Take THAT" indeed.
Re:It's not whining, follow the money to see why (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's not whining, follow the money to see why (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:french canadian (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah but... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's about a small number of people trying to force a large number of them to isolate themselves from the rest of the world's languages.
If the majority of Quebec's population wanted to speak pure French and nothing else, the government wouldn't have to do silly things like this, because English-labelled products wouldn't sell.
Ah, but the French in France are just as afraid (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a strange attitude for a country that colonized a good tenth of the world, with a language that's spoken around the globe even today. They're one of the big five, and even if France and Quebec were bombed off the face of the Earth right now, students would still be learning French a thousand years from now to read 18th and 19th century literature.