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Quebec Cracks Down On Translated Videogames
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'."
Have you lived in Montreal? I've lived there, and have good friends who were born and lived there 20+ years. We don't speak french. There's no need to. I mean, sure, I could learn and converse with the sam people I speak to now, but in a different language. But calling Montreal a Francophone market is ridiculous. Freedom to choose, not laws to coerce.
If it made business sense in such a competitive industry, EA/Sony/MS/Nintendo would be doing it anyways. But they don't. They do it, reluctantly, because the large companies do not want to be branded as not conforming to the laws (bad PR). Before the laws, I assure you that no large game publishers were losing sales in Quebec because of english packaging.
Actually, you're quite off in terms of main-spoken language and bilingualism
(from the 1996 Census)
Population by knowledge of official language
(Knowledge of official language: Refers to the ability to conduct a conversation in English only, in French only, in both English and French, or in neither of the official languages of Canada)
Total Population: 7,125,575
English Only: 327,045 (4.59%)
French Only: 3,831,350 (53.77%)
Both English and French: 2,907,700 (40.81%)
Neither English nor French: 59,485
Of the Both English and French category: 1,792,750 (61.66%) of those people live in Montreal
(from the 2001 Census)
Population by mother tongue
Total Population: 7,125,580
English: 557,040 (7.82%)
French: 5,761,765 (80.86%)
English and French: 50,060
Population by home language
(Home language: the language spoken most often or on a regular basis at home by the individual at the time of the census)
Total population: 7,125,580
English: 480,040 (6.74%)
French: 5,484,280 (76.97%)
English and French: 477,955 (6.71%)
So English *far* from being the main spoken language in Quebec. In fact 408,185 out of 557,040 of people identifying english as their mother tongue live in Montreal and 376,620 out of
480,040 'home language' as english people.
So it would be *far* more accurate to say that outside Montreal, english is barely used.
The problem is that this is a cynical anti-competitive law, designed to make it difficult for other countries to sell products into Quebec.
No, its really not. Its an anti-assimilation law designed to protect the culture of Quebec.
There clearly is a market for English-only products
Why the fuck am I forced to buy Japanese games in english? They are clearly willing to do some translating, bub. This is just an incentive to do it for us too. And they aren`t even obliged to translate the actual game, the law is only about packaging.
Cereal boxes are in french, why not game boxes?
You can't take the sky from me...