Quebec Says 'Non' To English-Only Video Games 554
daveofdoom writes "The French-Canadian government of Quebec is saying 'non' to English-only video games if French versions are available. 'It's causing a lot of consternation among retailers and gamers alike, who fear the rules will lead to delays in video games arriving in the province, and may not accomplish what the law intends, which is to promote and protect the French language.' This is a ridiculous rule, as game companies can simply stop creating French versions of games to bypass the restriction."
French and France (Score:0, Insightful)
If the French language is so great, why does it need protection?
Ridiculous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it is ridiculous, but not for that reason.
Which game company would stop creating *French* localizations of their games and lose the market in *France* (and any other French-speaking language) in order to get their english version into the Quebec market?
*That* would be ridiculous.
The populations are off by an order of magnitude. The whole point is that a game company may not think it is worth localizing to French *just for Quebec* - but if they localize for French-speaking market, this forces the two versions to play on level fields.
But if they're already localizing in French, why on earth would they kill their other markets just to prioritize this one? If Quebec per se had ever been a priority, they'd have been treating the French version on par with English from the beginning - which is what this rule tries (futilely) to force.
There are a thousand reasons why this legislation may be wrong-headed and is unlikely to have any positive effect - but this is argument is, indeed, ridiculous.
Re:Most of these rules are. (Score:3, Insightful)
To make matters worse, I don't believe the requirements are nearly as bilingual in the other direction.
No, why would they be? English wasn't the declining language in the 60's. Nobody finds it more convenient to teach their kids French rather than English.
The whole idea behind the laws are that both cultures are intrinsically valuable and worth protecting. Except English culture and language doesn't need protection, it's doing quite fine on it's own
Re:many questions (Score:5, Insightful)
im a french canadian, and if this law is true it only means i will not be buying any more games in local stores.
french version of games are usually nearly close to unplayable due to being badly translated and even when they're properly translated there is inevitably some key concepts that simply don't exist and have to be adapted.
plain and simple, it detracts from the game. nevermind the lumberjacks that refuse to speak english, i demand my games in their native language.
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:4, Insightful)
Those responsible for creating the idea that we are in any way supportive of our irritating french neighbours, have been sacked.
-The Canadians
Color Me Unsuprised (Score:2, Insightful)
I live in Alberta so my views are undoubtedly very biased, however Quebec has a knack for both shooting itself in the foot and whining.
I'm not sure how much of our politics get into the news, but Quebec receives an incredible amount of money from the rest of Canada because of its desire to keep its dying language alive (Seriously, are any languages other than English going to be anything more than a curiosity in 100 years? I can assure you that french wont).
Many years ago, Quebec had a strong and irrational separatist movement where they got the idea that they weren't sucking enough money out of our government (And even back then they were getting largest slice of the pie) and decided to vote to separate (It failed 49-51%).
Frankly, if they had separated their economy would collapse, their health care and employment insurance would be gone, their pensions finished and they would likely be forced to crawl back to Canada in a few months. They have nothing aside from some god given right to make absurd demands.
I admit it, I'm bitter. It feels like every year Quebec whines to parliament and grabs a pile of money from our province. I have nothing against being part of a country and support transfer payments to provinces that are less fortunate. I strongly believe in being a unified country but Quebec has an arrogance that never fails to anger me. They have the gall to consider themselves a separate part of Canada but won't hesitate to suck us dry.
France is the market for french games. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not like game companies that make french games are suddenly going to stop over laws in a province with a population of 8 million.
The repercussions of this law seem tricky though. It sounds like multilingual versions have to be provided once a french version exists. Someone will have to pay for creating such versions since multilingual versions are uncommon in the industry. Most localization is paid for by local publishers.
It's easy to say the law is silly but at the same time I know I'd give a lot to see game companies be forced to release multilingual japanese/english versions in the US.
Re:Come on y'all, speak American already (Score:3, Insightful)
Heh, we'll let anyone speak English, any way they want. Make up new words, take words from other languages, whatever.
Maybe that is one reason why English is "winning".
I'm not able to come up with a car analogy to add to your post, I hope this will suffice:
English seems to follow a Wikipedia format, where anyone can contribute anything, and thanks to it's flexibility and openness, it grows and adapts at an astonishing pace.
French is more like a traditional Encyclopedia. All the prestige associated with it belongs to the past, and by the time a select few get around to updating it, those changes are already irrelevant.
Re:many questions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:4, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I love the Quebec people, it's their governing bodies and the asinine laws they pass that I can't stand. oh, yeah...Eh!
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:French and France (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget staying thin!
To this day nobody knows how they can consume so much smoke, bread and wine and still be some of the thinnest people in the world!
Preferring small portions of expensive food over affordable supersized meals
Re:French and France (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Language enclaves generally don't last very long.
How about thousands of years? Almost every country in Europe has its own language. That can't last long, I'm sure they're all about to switch to English any day now.
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:4, Insightful)
As a Canadian born in Quebec I would like to add a big fuck you to all the Quebecois language bigots who feel it should be their job to stomp all over the rights of Quebecers in the name of "protecting" their language. A language does not define a culture, people should be allowed to communicate in any manor of their choosing.
Yet, nobody seems to mind when Americans bitch and whine about speaking Spanish in America and "protecting" the English language...
Just sayin'
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, the countries in Europe aren't enclaves [wikipedia.org] -- none of them are completely surrounded by hundreds of miles of English speakers, as Quebec is.
Secondly, they're switching to English anyway [economist.com]. As someone who has lived in Europe for the last six years I can say from my own anecdotal experience that the more the world gets connected, the more people speak English. (I predict that we'll end up in a world not too linguistically different from Firefly)
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:1, Insightful)
Quebec without french laws is still Quebec. Fantastic!
Quebec is more than french. Don't let a language or job define you. Let Quebec evolve or it will die a slow, and painful death.
A vibrant and living language is what matters. Many languages die. It's ok. c'est la vie.
Death allows for the new to flourish. Otherwise, you are standing beside a nearly dead thing hoping it will live. I won't - it brings everything else to die with it. FTLOG! Be humane. come with us! We want you here, today! Not there, yesterday, forever.
Nostalgia is a disease! Let it go.
A mini-essay on cultural welfare (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead of taking a circumstantial approach as many do, trying to save the P.C. face while arguing about inefficiencies, heavy-handed approach, etc... I'll go straight to the heart of the issue -- WHY THE FUCK DO WE HAVE TO PROTECT FRENCH, or any other language for that matter? And even if you buy the argument that protecting the language == protecting the culture, I'm going to ask, why should culture be protected?
The fundamental essence of all cultures is that they change over time. They are born, they are developed, and when the time comes, they die off or are absorbed into other cultures. From the beginning of human history that has been the case. None of our modern cultures have existed from the beginning of civilization -- they are all an amalgamated product of hundreds of independent cultures which have evolved and intertwined over time. Different cultures merge and split, traditions come and go, beliefs, values, ways of thinking and doing things, they all change over time. The very reason we evolve and progress as a civilization is that we accept the concept of changing culture. Language is part of that. Do you see any sizable part of the population arguing that we should go back to, say, ancient Greek, because Greece was the birthplace of western civilization and thus (obviously) we must protect and preserve its language? How about ancient Roman? What about the Medeival Frankish? Or the Beowulfian English?
A culture is representative of a way of life that people who follow that culture observe. When the way of life changes, culture changes accordingly. If language is part of that culture, then the language will change accordingly too. If using a particular language is no longer representative of a way of life that the population follows (as is the case in the anglo-americanization of Quebec, for example), then that language is naturally fated to go from the dictionary books into the history books.
But only recently we have a bunch of self-righteous moralizers that claim that "preserving" a culture is the right thing to do. In other ways, they wish to (forcefully) impose measures on a population and stop the natural course of progress and cultural evolution that the population decided to take, and hang on to something that cannot stay on its legs independently. And if that wasn't enough, they want to pay for this enforcement out of the public purse.
This is a fundamentally and patently wrong approach. Cultures aren't supposed to be "preserved" in any context outside that of a museum. Cultures are supposed to represent the way of life undertaken by the followers of the culture. When a cultural element (in this case being the use of French) goes out of fashion, it should be let dying in dignity, not persistently preserved as a decaying corpse by the high-horse cultural necromancers. And certainly not being funded at public expense.
Cultural attributes come and go. Don't entertain yourself with the delusion that the French language will be preserved henceforth and to eternity. It won't. English won't be either. Sooner or later everything changes, and it's absurd to even speculate what language will be used in a thousand years from now. It's just a matter of time. All the cultural welfarists accomplish is putting the dying body of a cultural attribute on extended life support, using our money to turn what should have been a dignifiend passing away into a long, painful, and quite pathetic freak show.
Let the dying die in peace.
Re:Not so much! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Canadian, I would like to make it very, very clear that the rest of Canada, especially here in BC, have absolutely no patience, concern, or otherwise good will towards anyone who would consider them "Quebecois".
-The Canadians
Hey...! Speak for yourself. As an Albertan, I think Quebecois are important part of our country and that we all need to grow up and learn to get along, even if it means we westerners and other english canadians have to grow up first.
Sure the federal politics and apparent provincial idiocy regarding language protection have been very annoying for a very long time, but I believe in our nation of Canada, and I do not want to throw my fellow Canadians under the bus (even if some of them would throw me as an Albertan under the bus -- although it seems people from other eastern provinces do it too.)
Relations between french and english Canada seems to have always been difficult, but I don't think it is impossible. Hating each other and saying we wish Quebec would separate is not going to help. We don't need a big hole of alienated or separated people in the middle of our country.
We are supposed to take pride in our identity as one that celebrates diversity, contrasted to the melting pot to the south. For one, it is nice to have people from Quebec here who enjoy culture and life in a way that we who are more conservative Albertans can appreciate.
Maybe you are just trying to be funny, and let the world know that we non-Quebec canadians have quite a few differences with Quebec countrymen, but I have been concerned lately about the reckless hatred that seems to be growing among us.
We are supposed to have an identity as a peace-keeping nation. We have so much peace in Canada to be thankful for. Let's not throw that away.
Pretty sensible, if you consider the goals (Score:3, Insightful)
If you accept that it is a valid thing for Quebec to promote and protect the French language, then the law makes a lot of sense. Just like mandating that restaurants provide both English and French on their menus, this helps prevent the English language from squeezing French out of usage.
I've never had a strong opinion on whether it is a valid thing or not, but perhaps Americans can understand it better by considering how threatened people feel by rapid growth of the Spanish language in the Americas, and efforts to prevent/slow that.
In the 24th century... (Score:3, Insightful)
...French is an ancient obscure language.
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, language DOES help define culture within a society. Certain concepts simply do not exist or translate well in some languages. Here are two examples where there are translations, but the are imperfect; where something of the essence of the concept is truly "lost in translation":
- "Liberty" does not have a perfect 1:1 translation in Russian.
- "Personal space" does not have a perfect 1:1 translation in Japanese.
If something cannot be expressed in language, it cannot be communicated between people, and it usually is not part of the culture.
Sadly, the concept of being an a**hole to somebody that can't speak our native language seems to be shared by English and French speakers alike.
Re:many questions (Score:4, Insightful)
I generally prefer original titles as well. Be it a movie or else.
But if a game, intended for the whole family, isn't available in french, I just dont buy it because I can't expect my 10 and 11 year old kids to enjoy a title in a language they barely understand yet.
But try making an american understand that. They dont even watch translated movies anyway. They prefer to remake them locally.
I dont think this issue can be rationalized south of the border. So, expect lots of insidious comments in this thread about us french canadian.
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:5, Insightful)
In 50 years or so, the English speaking people will say the same about Spanish-Only games. LOL
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:3, Insightful)
As it happens, neither sign language nor hand-waving are forbidden by law, so you go right ahead and do so.
Nice way to generalize and perpetuate stereotypes (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm sure your momma burned the cookies at least once - does that suddenly make you claim that ALL cookies are evil? Lots of people have had bad experiences visiting every country, province or state, or city. Irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. Anecdotal evidence isn't data.
Gee, maybe the rest of the world should have a negative view of all Americans because of George Bush. Or all Japanese because of Sony DRM. Or all Germans because of Hitler. Or all Italians because of the Pope's retarded comments on condoms.
If they generalize all Canadians because of it, they have a bigger problem ...
And you haven't had bad experiences with non-frech people? The part of your sentence in parenthesis says otherwise. So, why do you cut others slack, but not the french? Sounds like it's not just "your friend" who has problems with stereotyping people.
Really? Despite the fact that for the majority of its' existence, the Prime Minister of Canada has been a French-Canadian? Are you test-driving Steve Job's RDF?
[citation needed] BTW, why not take a few shots at the Atlantic Provinces while you're at it ... or is it only Quebec that you bash because "they're french."
Check your history. Manitoba and Ontario did the same thing to their french minority. BC did the same thing to their asian minority. There's ignorance everywhere ... but, unlike *certain* other provinces, at no time did Quebec say that the english can't have their own government-funded schools.
All they're asking is that stuff that's sold be available in both languages if possible. Something that any manufacturer, looking out for their own best interests, would want to do anyway, right? This just helps overcome a certain amount of corporate inertia (companies don't necessarily act in their own best long-term financial interest - just look at GM and Chrysler - so sometimes they need a bit of prodding).
And for all the non-canadians looking in ... not all market regulation is "evil." How many other countries haven't had to bail out a single bank? For the record, we've had 2 small bank failures in the last 80 years - and none during the Great Depression. And for most of that time, the Prime Minister was french ...
And for the record, no, I'm not french. I'm 100% english ... but my daughters are both, and that's about as "relevant" as skin colour or anything else; in other words, not at all. This whole thing is not an "english vs. french" thing, despite some old farts wanting to make it look like that. They need to move on. This is not the 20th century any more.
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:4, Insightful)
Also it's the belief that if Johnny Foreigner is going to come live here, he should learn to speak the language.
Re:French and France (Score:2, Insightful)
And I can assure you that we have not many points in common with the rest of the north america.
Wow.. I think you mean, we have everything in common with the rest of North America except our language. Thinking we are so unique is mostly arrogance, and nothing else.
Re:Choice fodder! (Score:5, Insightful)
Canada is a country and recognising Quebec as somehow special is what created this mess in the first place.
Stuff like recognizing Quebec is precisely why Canada isn't the USA. Multiculturalism vs the Melting Pot and all that.
Re:Made a start... (Score:3, Insightful)