- QUEBEC - Louise Beaudoin,
Quebec's Language Minister, is poised to stop the Pokemon craze in this
province.
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- The game cards -- which have taken over living rooms,
rumpus rooms and classrooms all over the world -- don't conform with the
provisions of Quebec's language law.
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- As a result, the government has told the company that
makes the cards -- as well as video-game makers Nintendo, which makes GameBoy,
and Sony, which makes PlayStation -- that they have until Dec. 31 to come
up with plans for French-language packaging and instructions or face the
prospect of going to court.
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- "We're 82% of the population, why not have them
in French? They exist elsewhere, in France, in Belgium, in Switzerland,
why not here? ... I don't understand and I can't accept it," Ms. Beaudoin
said.
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- The clamour for the cards, movies, television programs
and other marketing goodies associated with Pokemon -- Japanese slang for
pocket monsters -- has worn on nerves and frayed tempers in millions of
households.
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- "Our delegations in Tokyo, Munich and Paris did
field work only to find that in Germany, everything is in German, in France
it's the same, and it's like that in Japan ... we hope this ultimatum will
result in our law being respected," Ms. Beaudoin said.
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- Pokemon cards are in fact a spin-off from a video game
designed for the handheld Nintendo GameBoy. The 150 characters who populate
the mythical world of the pocket monsters were created in 1996 and have
since become a multi-billion-dollar industry.
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- The cards have been banned from some schools in Canada,
and a 12-year-old Laval, Que., boy was stabbed in the aftermath of a dispute
over his set of cards.
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- Wizards of the Coast of Renton, Wash., which manufactures
the cards for North America, said it has just finished a French translation
of the cards, and that they will be available in Canada in February.
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- "The game was originally written in Japanese, but
we undertook the lengthy process of English translation, and once that
was finished, the language we did next was French," said Jenny Bendel,
a company spokeswoman.
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- The company had no comment on Ms. Beaudoin's ultimatum,
saying simply that a French version was released in Europe last week, and
that more cards will be sent to Canada once they are printed.
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- Under the provisions of the language charter, current
packaging for most video games is in fact illegal. Article 205 of the law
provides for fines of up to $1,400 for a first offence, and up to $7,000
for each subsequent one.
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- Officials at Sony Canada and Nintendo didn't return messages
yesterday.
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