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Quebec Says 'Non' To English-Only Video Games
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."
Wow. Let the French jokes AND Canadian jokes commence!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Most rules about French in Canada are ridiculous. Government officials need to be bilingual regardless of capability of doing a job, for example. Firing a native French speaker from government is almost impossible, regardless of how badly they do at their job. And if people in government has what is deemed an inadequate level of french, the government pays for one-on-one french lessons INSTEAD of for doing your job, and instead of for french classes with other people learning it or instead of for a government billet in a french-speaking area where you can learn the language through immersion. Do you have any idea what that costs that taxpayer? Or how stupid it is?
Protecting cultural heritage is one thing, but this is even worse than political correctness run amuck, because it's groupthink feeding into this mentality that it's bigoted to be against these policies, even when they're ridiculously inefficient.
To make matters worse, I don't believe the requirements are nearly as bilingual in the other direction.
If the French language is so great, why does it need protection?
because English people are physically incapable of chain smoking, drinking wine, being obnoxiously rude and highly insecure of their culture, all at the same time.
-I only code in BASIC.-
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.
toutes vos base sont appartiennent à nous
Okay, I really don't know where to start. Hi, my name is mclc, I am a French canadian and I feel guilty because of where I am born, and because of my native language, which is French, and because my ancestors were conquered in the Plaines d'Abraham. I play mostly in English, by the way. I watch movies in their original language too. Ho yeah, movies are also under this law. And you know what? I can watch movies in English if I want. I have a contact for that. It's a very dangerous black market to be. By law, watching a movie in English is like buying drugs and hiring a hitman, but worse.
As some people said in a few comments, Quebec has a law to claim the right of French speaking people to be served, to work, live, dream and eat in French. Why you ask? BECAUSE YOU ARE 350 MILLIONS OF ENGLISH SPEAKING AMERICANS AND CANADIANS! Is that so hard to understand? Yeah, we lost a war, so what? We are 80% of French canadians in the province of Quebec. English speakers are protected by the federal laws saying that every service must be available in French and in English (this is applied in Quebec, New-Brunswick and Ontario, but mostly in Quebec as there is no other place in the country where you will really get service in both languages).
Now, because you all like separatists scandals, I will disapoint you. It is not forbidden to sell an English game. Understood? Here's the catch that the evil French speaking aliens set up : you will be forbidden to sell the game in English if, and only if the game is made elsewhere in French. This means that if France (by the way, you just cannot get a game in English in France, by law) does not have the game until a few months, we in Quebec will have the English only version until then. When France (and Quebec) finally gets the game in French, well guess what? The two versions will be available! Bilingual like movies, or books, or every service offered by the Government of Quebec (unlike all other province). Thank yooooouuuuu bilingual country! Naturally, a lot of games are now localized, which means have more than one language in the same CD.
Now, what do you do for us, Rest of Canada, except insulting every frog in Quebec? All I hear is the eternal speak white, only said differently (and usually some stuff about the English Canada who won the war). Live in the 21st century, people. Let us, minority in Canada, speak French as we let you, minority in Quebec speak English. We pass great laws that preserve French and does not affect English in any ways. We almost all know a little of English in Quebec, but hey, IT'S NOT OUR NATIVE LANGUAGE. You just cannot think as good in an other language than your own. For example, all this text was great in my head, and now I don't know where I'm going. But hey, just come in Quebec, speak English in any store and you will be gladly served. French people will switch to English automatically, speak an English sounding more like a wookie, but we will try. I think we deserve the same thing. And in our case, we are only 7 millions in a sea of 350 millions. It is for our protection.
Je vous aime quand même.
mclc
If you had taken the time to read about this specific thing, you'd learn that not only is this old news (this was done in 2007!), but that the CANADIAN association of video game signed this bill.
Also, any computer game has been subject to this exact bill since october 2007. The only difference is that now, console games are also covered.
If you took the time to read the description, you'd have learned that distributor are mandated to offer the french version of a game provided that it already exists somewhere else.
The bill specifies that any reseller can sell the english version as long as they also offer the french version if it exists. I'm a french quebecer and I kept buying english computer games without noticing anything.
The only problem that I heard about caused by this bill so far has been with world of warcraft, for which the french version was originally built for playing on european servers, so you could not play with a friend who bought the english version...
You might find this interesting:
http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/francisation/consommateurs/secteur/jeux_video/jeuxvideo.html
Seriously, are any languages other than English going to be anything more than a curiosity in 100 years?
Wow... Wow. You are so wrong.
Right now, depending on how you define language users, there are over 1 billion English users in the world. Only around 375 million of those are native speakers. The remaining are non-native speakers.
Do you see what that means?
What that means is that people are adopting English as a second language; not using it at home. In fact, a lot of the "outer circle" English-speaking countries (e.g. India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore) principally use English as a lingua franca due to the linguistic complexity of their geographical area. African countries adopt English because it's better for business, and because picking any of the local languages could fan the flames of aeons-old tribal rivalries. The Indian subcontinent just has too many languages and dialects to bother with, so they use English for business.
Nowhere are these people's first languages dying out.
Furthermore, large countries of lingua franca English users, like India, tend to develop their own variety of English, resulting in there not being a single English in the world, but World Englishes, an important concept introduced by the noted Indian linguist Braj Kachru.
A "World English" is a variety of English that is comprehensible and regular within a certain population For example, in Singapore, the verb "reply" is transitive, i.e. people say "I replied his email," with the noun phrase "his email" functioning as the object of the verb "reply." Inner circle English speakers use it only as an intransitive verb, necessitating a prepositional phrase: "I replied to his email." This usage cannot really be considered a mistake, because every user of this variety of English uses this word this way.
Moreover, this idea of "one billion English speakers" really doesn't sit well with me. Pack up your things and take a long holiday sometime. Travel to a lot of different countries, and see how many people you can find who speak English. You'll find a lot more in Europe than elsewhere, but you might be surprised at how many people don't. I live in Japan, and despite English being a compulsory subject in jr. high and high school, finding anyone who speaks more than a couple horribly-pronounced words is pretty difficult. They just don't have an opportunity or need to use it most of the time, and classes are designed to get them to pass entrance tests, not actually speak or use the language (believe me--I've taught at every level of the Japanese education system--from first grade through university).
Then there is the oft-cited statistic about China becoming the biggest English-speaking country in the world. I really have no idea what that is supposed to mean. They, too, have compulsory English education, but backpack around China for a month or so and you can probably count on one hand how many people you ran into who spoke English. Furthermore, China is never, ever, ever going to let Mandarin lapse for English. Never never never. When your country is named "The Central Nation" (i.e. "the center of the world"), you take your language and culture very seriously. Mao's revolution was largely to kick Western influence out of the country (Japan was considered Western--that was not a mistake by any means). However, after taking power, even he could not convince people to abandon the Chinese character system (hanzi) in favor of the Pinyin romanization system. People saw even this literacy-boosting move as a betrayal of their Chinese cultural identity. So there's another English language myth busted, I hope.
Finally, let's look at that term I've been kicking around in this growing reply: Lingua Franca. ...The French language. Now, historically, it's a little more complex than that, but basically, a form of French used to be the trad