NTSC GameCubes have no Language setting, so the language byte in SRAM is always 0. Some NTSC games do react oddly and display unfinished translations and similar when the byte is set to a nonzero value that corresponds to a non-English language on a PAL GameCube. See issue 7731: https://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/issues/detail?id=7731.
This fixes a minor bug where the IPL thinks the SRAM has been corrupted and forces you to re-set date/time and settings when you change language in Config -> GameCube while not skipping the IPL on boot.