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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'."
It makes me wonder what the reasons behind this are.
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.
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.
Not that I agree entirely with it, but the law in question was actually designed originally to "protect the french languange in Quebec" seeing as the province is in a (mostly) english-speaking country. It came at the time in a response to the problem for the french-speaking population to actually understand the signage in its environment, since much of the companies/etc. were run primarily by the english-speaking. However, this did not have entirely the desired effect (of course, this depends on perspectives) since the result was mass exodus from Montreal to Toronto as far as company headquarters were concerned. Anywayz, the issue always was a bit of a touchy issue for the province.
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"