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SNES Classic Edition possibly not sold in Quebec, Canada due to lack of translation

Hellraizah

Member
When you live in Québec, you get used to being excluded from a lot of things, from international contests to being able to buy French movies because they weren't rated by the Régie du Cinéma du Québec and are illegal to sell because of this, etc.

It's so frustrating.
 

Grimsen

Member
Here is the agreement between the ESA and the OQLF AuthenticM was explaining:

http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/francisation/consommateurs/secteur/jeux_video/details_entente.pdf

ENFIN, ON PEUT JOUER EN FRANÇAIS Le 10 septembre 2007, l’Office québécois de la langue française et l’Association canadienne du logiciel de divertissement dévoilaient une entente au sujet de la distribution de la version française des jeux vidéo au Québec. Cette entente atteindra son plein potentiel à compter du 1er avril prochain, et le gouvernement du Québec le soulignera par une campagne d’information. Voici un rappel des principaux éléments de l’entente : Emballage Depuis le 10 septembre 2007, tous les nouveaux jeux vidéo vendus au Québec doivent être offerts dans un emballage en français et avec des documents en français, et ce, sans suremballage. Jeux pour ordinateurs Depuis le 1er octobre 2007, tous les nouveaux jeux vidéo pour ordinateurs vendus au Québec doivent être offerts en français lorsque la version française existe quelque part dans le monde. Jeux pour consoles À compter du 1er avril 2009, tous les nouveaux jeux vidéo pour les consoles de nouvelle génération vendus au Québec devront être offerts en français lorsque la version française existe quelque part dans le monde. Il faut noter que : o l’entente ne porte que sur les jeux vidéo lancés après l’une ou l’autre des dates indiquées et s’applique autant aux jeux neufs qu’aux jeux d’occasion; o l’entente ne porte que sur les consoles de jeux de la nouvelle génération (Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP) ainsi que sur les futures générations de consoles; o si la version française et la version anglaise d’un jeu vidéo sont offertes séparément, les distributeurs et les détaillants qui désirent vendre ou louer la version anglaise du jeu doivent aussi vendre ou louer la version française, et l’emballage de ce jeu, ainsi que les documents qui l’accompagnent, peuvent être rédigés uniquement dans la langue du jeu; o la version anglaise d’un jeu vidéo peut être vendue si aucune version française n’existe dans le monde, dans la mesure où l’emballage et les documents qui accompagnent le jeu sont en français.

Translation :

FINALLY, PLAYING IN FRENCH On September 10, 2007, the Office of the French Language and the Canadian Entertainment Software Association unveiled an agreement concerning the distribution of the French version of video games in Québec. This agreement will reach its full potential as of April 1, and the Québec government will highlight it with an information campaign. Here is a reminder of the main elements of the agreement: Packaging Since September 10, 2007, all new video games sold in Quebec must be offered in French packaging and with French documents, without overpacking. Computer games Since October 1, 2007, all new video games for computers sold in Quebec must be offered in French when the French version exists somewhere in the world. Console Games Effective April 1, 2009, all new video games for new generation consoles sold in Quebec must be offered in French when the French version exists somewhere in the world. It should be noted that: o the agreement relates only to video games launched after one of the dates indicated and applies to both new and used games; O the agreement covers only new generation game consoles (Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP) and future generations of consoles; O if the French and English versions of a video game are offered separately, distributors and retailers who wish to sell or rent the English version of the game must also sell or rent the French version and the packaging of the game, Together with the accompanying documents, may be drawn up only in the language of the game; O the English version of a video game may be sold if no French version exists in the world, as the packaging and accompanying documents are in French.
 

Berg

Member
Quebec French laws are crazy. My employer spends 100s of thousands a year on translation to be able to retail there.
 
The montreal gazette tried to reach nintendo of canada for a comment and they denied to comment their story. That's a fuckin shitty thing to do.
 

Oneself

Member
snes-classic.jpg


?

I see three languages on that box.
Well, f me.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
isnt NERD French? Strange, if that's the case.
 
C'est de la crisse de marde ca!

Such bullshit! Are there really still people in QC that don't speak english in 2017? (Before you throw me any stones, I'm also from QC)
 

ys45

Member
C'est de la crisse de marde ca!

Such bullshit! Are there really still people in QC that don't speak english in 2017? (Before you throw me any stones, I'm also from QC)

Yes there is, I know someone who is 21 years old and doesn't speak a single word of English besides Yes and No :p
 

martbob

Neo Member
C'est de la crisse de marde ca!

Such bullshit! Are there really still people in QC that don't speak english in 2017? (Before you throw me any stones, I'm also from QC)

Sadly yes.

La vrai question c'est qu'est-ce que la loi protège vraiment.

Je peux acheter ce produit partout dans le monde (s'il était plus disponible bien sûr, merci Nintendo :| ), mais au Canada non c'est dangereux pour la langue.

Non sense.
 
Isn't it relatively easy to make 50hz roms run at 60hz in an emulator?

Off the top of my head, I know that if I run a 60hz PAL Rom in Higan while my display's refresh rate is set to 50hz, the game runs at 50hz (in slow motion). I'd imagine the same would happen the other way around.
It can be but will the game actually run correctly is another matter. I believe for Zelda LTTP and Super Metroid Link and Samus move at 6/5 the speed they normally do (of course the enemies and world are still slow which leads to being able to escape the bomb room in SM without fighting the Choso statue). So in this case you would be left with a should banned from speedruns version of the game.

But I think what is being got at here is an NTSC French LTTP ROM made in the day that is not being included.

So if that holds true, then Zelda ALTTP has to be one of them. Wonder what the other title is.
If we look to the PAL regions then Super Metroid and Secret of Mana are possible but that is kind of stretching things a bit.
 
Sounds like their parents and the education system failed them.

It's 99% the kid's fault. I was force to take Spanish in school, but it's not the class I wanted. I did 4 years, pass everything with good enough grade and can't remember a thing.

If you don't want to learn, you won't.

On-topic: Most people are saying it's the language law's fault, but to me it's Nintendo's. They know the rules and always complied with them before.

Hopefully the non answer from Nintendo is them trying to find an alternative before responding. I'll take the PAL version if we must.
 

chemgear

Neo Member
Meh, when the Language Police can literally come after you for "grilled cheese", I'm surprised that this sort of thing does not happen more often.

It's crazy that Language Police are even a thing.
 

NolbertoS

Member
Tabernac, le crisse :(. Feel for you my fellow Canadien GAF. A online buddy of mine reserved his copy in Toronto BB from his wife's family. I always wished that Quebec would make exceptions for some games or systems, due to costs mostly, as Nintendo deemed translating all roms in french expensive
 

chemgear

Neo Member
Not sure why there would or should be exception just for video games (or the SNES that you happen to want at this moment)

Other businesses and products are similarly hurt cost wise and punished by the same crazy laws all the time. If you specifically throw up greater burdens for people and businesses, do not be surprised at all when they decide that your market is not worth the bother. Especially for something with such crazy high demand around the world.

If people care, they should change their laws.
 

martbob

Neo Member
Not sure why there would or should be exception just for video games (or the SNES that you happen to want at this moment)

Other businesses and products are similarly hurt cost wise and punished by the same crazy laws all the time. If you specifically throw up greater burdens for people and businesses, do not be surprised at all when they decide that your market is not worth the bother. Especially for something with such crazy high demand around the world.

If people care, they should change their laws.

I would gladly change the law. Where do I sign
 
D

Deleted member 126221

Unconfirmed Member
I won't reply as aggressively as yesterday, but seriously guys, go read AuthenticM's posts on the previous page. The situation more complex than just "nazi language police hating english". There's nothing illegal in selling english-only games when no french translation exists, the problem is the law (passed under a Liberal, federalist government) states that if a french translation for a game exists somewhere, we need to have access to that translation. It's not a problem 99.9% of the time, the edge case here is the european SNES Mini using some PAL roms that contain a french translation, while we have the original NTSC roms that were english-only back then.

It's a pretty unique scenario and I'm sure there are many ways this could have been fixed, but I doubt Nintendo care as their preorders already sold out in minutes even with a big part of the market excluded.
 
Je compatis avec vous, les gaffeurs québecois. C'est bien decevant de ne pas pouvoir acheter quoi que ce soit chez vous. Néanmoins, il faut reconnaître que les lois servent vraiment à quelque chose. Ce qui me frappe le plus, en tant qu'Ontarien, c'est à quel point le Québec a pu préserver sa culture du fait des lois linguistiques. La culture ontarienne, par exemple, ça n'existe pas vraiment. À force de consommer que des médias américains, on est pas mal devenus des américains. Ça aussi, c'est deçevant.

Dans ce cas, c'est vraiment nul—toutefois, j'suis heureux qu'il existe un endroit en Amérique du Nord où le français peut prospérer. Alors mes sentiments sont ambigus, j'sais pas vraiment quelle est la bonne solution...


Quebec French laws are crazy. My employer spends 100s of thousands a year on translation to be able to retail there.

Hey, people outside of Québec (like me) have a job because of this stuff!

Sounds like their parents and the education system failed them.

Why is that? If someone can live and work in Québec entirely in French and English isn't required to live a full life, shouldn't they be able to?
 

Seik

Banned
I won't reply as aggressively as yesterday, but seriously guys, go read AuthenticM's posts on the previous page. The situation more complex than just "nazi language police hating english". There's nothing illegal in selling english-only games when no french translation exists, the problem is the law (passed under a Liberal, federalist government) states that if a french translation for a game exists somewhere, we need to have access to that translation. It's not a problem 99.9% of the time, the edge case here is the european SNES Mini using some PAL roms that contain a french translation, while we have the original NTSC roms that were english-only back then.

It's a pretty unique scenario and I'm sure there are many ways this could have been fixed, but I doubt Nintendo care as their preorders already sold out in minutes even with a big part of the market excluded.

I'm sure the problem lies within Zelda A Link To The Past.

We had a French-only cartridge in Quebec. I think that's one of the only SNES game we had like that, everything else was in English.
 

chemgear

Neo Member
Same place as any other democratic country/province, the ballot box.

Contact your local government representative. Make your views known. Contact your Language Minister (again, I cannot believe that is an actual thing).
 

Glowsquid

Member
This has affected a bunch of games (The three Wii JRPG and Xenoblade Chronicles X were released late at retail because of the same clause, and Kokuga on 3DS isn't avaialble at all on the Canadian eshop seemingly because fo this), but this is definitely the most upsetting case so far.

Why is that? If someone can live and work in Québec entirely in French and English isn't required to live a full life, shouldn't they be able to?

Tu devrais voir les sujets traitant du Québec dans la section off-topic. Invariablement, la moitié des réponses sont du style "Pourquoi ces putains de frogs refusent de se faire assimiler".
 

tiijj

Member
But in this particular case, we are dealing with roms. I guess it would have been too much work for Nintendo to reverse engineer the French PAL roms, copy the French translation, and put them in the NTSC roms. They couldn't just put the PAL roms in the console, as the games would run in slow-motion because of the whole PAL 50mhz thing.

Isn't it relatively easy to make 50hz roms run at 60hz in an emulator?

Off the top of my head, I know that if I run a 60hz PAL Rom in Higan while my display's refresh rate is set to 50hz, the game runs at 50hz (in slow motion). I'd imagine the same would happen the other way around.

The PAL (EU/AU/NZ) version of SNES Classic will run at 60hz.
 
Tu devrais voir les sujets traitant du Québec dans la section off-topic. Invariablement, la moitié des réponses sont du style "Pourquoi ces putains de frogs refusent de se faire assimiler".
Malheureusement, ça ne m'étonne pas du tout. En Ontario, j'entends ce genre de connerie trop souvent. Toujours de la part des gens qui n'ont fait rien pour comprendre la situation de nos voisins québécois. Toutefois, ce n'est pas un avis partagé par tout le monde ici.
 

Oneself

Member
Néanmoins, il faut reconnaître que les lois servent vraiment à quelque chose. Ce qui me frappe le plus, en tant qu'Ontarien, c'est à quel point le Québec a pu préserver sa culture du fait des lois linguistiques. La culture ontarienne, par exemple, ça n'existe pas vraiment. À force de consommer que des médias américains, on est pas mal devenus des américains. Ça aussi, c'est deçevant.

Dans ce cas, c'est vraiment nul—toutefois, j'suis heureux qu'il existe un endroit en Amérique du Nord où le français peut prospérer.
Thank you.
Sadly most people don't see/understand that from the inside, especially in the western parts of Canada. People coming from other parts of the world understand it better.
 

Samemind

Member
Je compatis avec vous, les gaffeurs québecois. C'est bien decevant de ne pas pouvoir acheter quoi que ce soit chez vous. Néanmoins, il faut reconnaître que les lois servent vraiment à quelque chose. Ce qui me frappe le plus, en tant qu'Ontarien, c'est à quel point le Québec a pu préserver sa culture du fait des lois linguistiques. La culture ontarienne, par exemple, ça n'existe pas vraiment. À force de consommer que des médias américains, on est pas mal devenus des américains. Ça aussi, c'est deçevant.

Dans ce cas, c'est vraiment nul—toutefois, j'suis heureux qu'il existe un endroit en Amérique du Nord où le français peut prospérer. Alors mes sentiments sont ambigus, j'sais pas vraiment quelle est la bonne solution...




Hey, people outside of Québec (like me) have a job because of this stuff!



Why is that? If someone can live and work in Québec entirely in French and English isn't required to live a full life, shouldn't they be able to?

A quoi sert de proteger la culture si elle est bonne que pour nous? Certain que ca vaut pas de faire a semblant qu'on existe pas dans le meme monde que le reste de l'humanite.

Fuck isolationism.
 
D

Deleted member 126221

Unconfirmed Member
A quoi sert de proteger la culture si elle est bonne que pour nous? Certain que ca vaut pas de faire a semblant qu'on existe pas dans le meme monde que le reste de l'humanite.

Fuck isolationism.

Je vois bien à te lire que la langue française est loin d'être une de tes priorités, mais... veux-tu bin me dire de quoi tu parles? "Faire semblant qu'on existe pas dans le même monde que le reste de l'humanité"? T'es conscient que le français est parlé ailleurs qu'au Québec, et que plusieurs de nos produits culturels (films, romans, musique, etc.) ont du succès à l'étranger?
 

ys45

Member
It's 99% the kid's fault. I was force to take Spanish in school, but it's not the class I wanted. I did 4 years, pass everything with good enough grade and can't remember a thing.

If you don't want to learn, you won't.

I was going to reply something like that!
I agree 100% with this comment.

Anyway back on topic, hopefully, Nintendo will keep shipping SNES mini after the launch because I remember last year I was able to get one on Amazon.ca like 1 month after .
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
I won't reply as aggressively as yesterday, but seriously guys, go read AuthenticM's posts on the previous page. The situation more complex than just "nazi language police hating english". There's nothing illegal in selling english-only games when no french translation exists, the problem is the law (passed under a Liberal, federalist government) states that if a french translation for a game exists somewhere, we need to have access to that translation. It's not a problem 99.9% of the time, the edge case here is the european SNES Mini using some PAL roms that contain a french translation, while we have the original NTSC roms that were english-only back then.

It's a pretty unique scenario and I'm sure there are many ways this could have been fixed, but I doubt Nintendo care as their preorders already sold out in minutes even with a big part of the market excluded.

It's still stupid. I'm very happy that we do not have such a law in Germany, lest we would be stuck with damn 50 Hz copies on the SNES Mini. If a game is in a language you do not understand, just don't buy it. Also, if the language in question is English, you should spend some time learning it anyway. Why take away the game also from people who do speak the language, especially if it is the world's language?
 

Samemind

Member
Je vois bien à te lire que la langue française est loin d'être une de tes priorités, mais... veux-tu bin me dire de quoi tu parles? "Faire semblant qu'on existe pas dans le même monde que le reste de l'humanité"? T'es conscient que le français est parlé ailleurs qu'au Québec, et que plusieurs de nos produits culturels (films, romans, musique, etc.) ont du succès à l'étranger?

J'en ai jamais entendu de telle affaire. Pour ma part, je suis qu'un ignoble cretin qui peut pas etre consommateur comme il le veut alors je rage.

J'ai juste jamais compris a quoi ca servait de refuser la vente de ces produits. J'ai appris l'anglais a force de jouer dans mon enfance parce que j'avais pas le choix, pis je suis ben content d'etre arriver au cours d'anglais au secondaire genre "Easy-peazy".

I want to partake of foreign media and the administration says no, so I don't like it. It's not the first time QC gets the short straw and it probably won't be the last.
 
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