Yeah! Finnish dubs all the way across the sky!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_TLBZxY4U

I did learn English to understand my old Amstrad, now that I think of it. It was by far the main motivation.

Even the thought of Agapio Racing Team makes me grimace.

It wasn't really as much ridicule as probably a natural reaction to how "adorable" it is when people try so hard to speak their language with that funny accent.

Also don't know how much the education in terms of foreign languages differs from town to town in France. Our partner school was located in Rouen, it seemed to have a comparably high standard to me, however.
Yeah, I also started learning English early because I grew up with an Amiga (with lots of English-only games). Later on it was mostly American shows and movies that made me learn English rather quickly. Thanks to Futurama I learned English a lot faster than I would have by reading educational literature. :p But I must say that people seem to underestimate how much games can support learning other languages due to their interactive nature - games like Deus Ex or Morrowind really required me to understand what all those NPCs were saying so I occasionally had to take a look into a dictionary. Also the great writing in Vampire: Redemption fascinated me so much that I learned a lot of new words in the process (it also introduced me to comparably authentic "olde" English as well as some modern slang in the later parts). Yup, games are great teaching tools. :D

I'm not entirely sure how it works for games - a topic my lecturers presumably have very little, if any, experience with - but let's say you do the subtitles for a documentary film about elephants that's aired on a fictitious Channel One. The person you negotiate the contract with agrees to let you have the rights to the subtitles for whatever reason - you suggest a lower price, he makes a mistake, you give him a handjob or something. Sixteen months later Channel Two wants to air the very same documentary; they already have the rights to air it, but no subtitles. One of the Channel Two executives taped the documentary back when it was on Channel One (yeah, he's still got the Philips VCR he inherited from his father), watches it again and decides that the subtitles are spot on. Joy of joys, you hold the rights because you insisted on it even though you didn't know whether you'd actually profit from them. The Channel is pleased with your work but still tries to figure out whether they could get a similar-quality subtitling from a freelancer for less money. Then disaster strikes; a natural disaster, war or a riot causes Superbowl to be cancelled for the year, so the channel decides to fill the vacuum by airing the documentary. Naturally, this creates another vacuum further down the line, but they can deal with it later; for now, getting the subtitles quickly are a priority. From your point of view, you're getting paid for work you've already done; Channel Two, on the other hand, most likely doesn't care who or where the subtitles come from and how much time has been used on them, as long as it suits their needs.

An example from literature, then. Back when you were a poor student, a small publisher contacted you and asked you to do a French translation for a novel. You figure you could really use the money and agree to do the translation; you check the text and manage to convince the publisher that the pay is quite poor for the work they expect you to do, and that you could still do the translation for them if they agreed to let you have the rights. They say yes, get their translation and publish it. The novel flies in under the radar at first, but a literature journalist gives it a shot and praises it greatly. Word gets around, people read the novel and love it to bits. Hoping to capitalize on this, the publisher decides to republish the French version in e-book format to spread the joy. The original contract only gave them the rights to use the translation in printed format, so now they buy the translation from you again to use on e-books - it was your translation that the people loved, so of course that's the one to use. Besides, rebuying the rights costs the publishers about the same (possibly less) as having the entire thing translated all over again, so it's not like there are any saving to be had by retranslating it.

So yes, you can sell a translation separately. And yes, a game or a book could be retranslated by someone else, but I'm sure a publisher would rather pay a couple of thousand euros to a translator they already have experience with than risk waiting several months for a substandard translation by somebody else.

I always figured it was part of GOG's whole commitment to global availability for every game. It may be difficult to get international rights for a translation, and while Steam and others can just regionally restrict the languages, GOG cannot without introducing geo-IP.

At the very least, I think the problem goes beyond "GOG is lazy and hates non-English customers". The fact that they ensure every game can be sold everywhere proves that isn't true.

Why in the world is the OP downvoted? The question was not inflammatory in any way.

thou shalt not question nor bring in doubt any of GoG's doing, as this is an abomination in the eyes of our lord

.... only reason I can think of

ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż.

suck on that, foreign people!
GOG cult is getting stronger.

Οχ οχ πως υποφέρω.

I can guarantee it to you, Polish pronounciation is much harder than greek :P

Okay. I thought you were just bragging about weird characters. Greek pronounciation is pretty straightforward indeed. That said, I'm not sure polish pronounciation is crazier than english. English is absolutely random, no relation whatsoever between vowels and the sounds they make in a given word.

English is a purely written langage and is simply not supposed to be spoken.

Okay this is horrible.

Made me want to watch the movie, though.

The movie is amazing :D I don't know if, but probably it's sold somewhere with english subs... It's called Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową" , btw.