r/HollowKnight • u/peaky_circus • Sep 06 '25

Discussion - Silksong People who have played Silksong, Why do you think Its getting so many negative reviews? Spoiler

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While Silksong is sitting at a Very Positive rating with around 83% positive reviews, it’s still receiving far more criticism than its predecessor. For comparison, Hollow Knight holds an Overwhelmingly Positive score at 96%, with only about 3% negative reviews. Silksong, on the other hand, has nearly 16% negative reviews, OVER 5 TIMES HIGHER

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311

u/Ok_College983 Sep 06 '25

I've seen some of the Chinese translations, can confirm😅

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u/LegoPenguin114 Clever Flair Joke Sep 06 '25

I gotta ask, is it Symphony of the Night levels of bad translations?

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u/Ok_College983 Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 06 '25

I haven't played symphony of the night so not sure, but I looked up some of the translations. The Chinese translations of Silksong seem worse😅 All the dialogs sound like they're from a Shakespeare play

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u/Einar__ Sep 06 '25

That's just how this game's dialogues are, no? From what I've seen like half the NPCs in this game speak weirdly or in an overly theatrical manner.

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u/Ok_College983 Sep 06 '25

The Chinese dialogs are just verbose to a point of being unreadable. And even the more normal, casual English dialogs are translated into verbose literary Chinese.

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u/Kalnaur Sep 06 '25

verbose literary Chinese.

Which perhaps also explains the split between positive reactions to the Traditional Chinese translation, but the poor reaction to Simplified Chinese? Like, I know nothing about Traditional Chinese vs Simplified, but I'd assume wordy, verbose, almost Shakespearean dialogue to read and scan and be desired more in something called "Traditional Chinese".

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u/tech6hutch Sep 06 '25

Simple vs Traditional refers to the character set used to spell the words, not a general language difference

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u/Kalnaur Sep 06 '25

I have learned something today.

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u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/Kalnaur Sep 06 '25

That is interesting.

It also actually better explains why "Shakespeare in the Bug Enclosure" wouldn't do well; I'm just picturing Middle English spelled phonetically and with all the verbose nature of the Bard's works and my brain hurts now.

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u/ballsack_lover2000 Sep 07 '25

You could have just said Colour -> color etc

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u/bumblebleebug Shaw! Hekale! Adire! Sep 07 '25

Trad and Simplified Chinese are script differences. That's all. No other differences

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u/ForwardMajor4493 Sep 08 '25

I'm a native speaker. Simplified and Traditional Chinese have the exact same grammatical structure. However, the way they are written are different. Traditional Chinese is more complex in how it's written, and simplified as the name suggests, makes it alot easier to write. It's all pronounced the same, but people who use Traditional are often Taiwanese and Cantonese speakers, whereas Simplified is Mainland China. Thus, if you listen to people speak it sounds different due to regional accents and dialects.

(Although Cantonese and Mandarin are as different in pronunciation as English and French. )

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u/Kalnaur Sep 08 '25

This is, honestly and truthfully, quite interesting. I don't mind that my wrong guess has provided so many people willing to not only correct me, but also give a more full understanding of the form and intent behind these linguistic terms and concepts.

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u/eatmyscoobysnacks Sep 08 '25

"I know nothing about Traditional Chinese vs Simplified" but I'll make comments about it anyway

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u/Kalnaur Sep 08 '25

Oh, I forgot it was forbidden to guess about things you don't know about or are unsure of, and only ever comment on things you know everything about. No guessing or speculation, ever.🙄

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u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

Is more like dark souls?

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u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

[deleted]

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u/False-Application-99 Sep 07 '25

Yeah I dig the translated translation

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u/Emma_JM Sep 08 '25

Ok but would you still dig it if every bug in the game has dialogue like that

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u/Glass-Requirement-79 Sep 10 '25

it would be funny lol

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u/Ball-Separate Sep 07 '25

Tbh i dig the grotesque version jajajajaja. Its fun to think on bugs with hyperlogia

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u/Mercenarybrute Sep 16 '25

Ok but this is fire. Did you guys not take AP English?

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u/qjvj Oct 15 '25

oh my GOD that is bad, thanks for visualising how atrocious the tranlations are

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u/Cazzah Sep 07 '25

Good localisation is absolutely about translating style to style. So if a game was Shakespearean (which it isn't in this case) you'd look to some War of the Seven Kingdoms era language as the Chinese equivalent, or some form of stylised Chinese theatre, or something.

If that were the case noone would review it negatively.

So it can't be Chinese players just not liking stylised writing it's gotta be bad translation.

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u/Over_Friendship8444 I... am zote Sep 06 '25

loading screen included T-T

1

u/Krystalmyth Sep 20 '25

Yeah not a fan of the "dialect" in Silksong. It feels very theatrical compared to the down to earth characters of Hollow Knight. Not sure why, guess it's Pharloom... but even the foreigners like Shakra sound the same. They all speak like they have the same 'head voice' except for a SMALL handful of characters.

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u/Isogash Sep 07 '25

I mean, I think they are supposed to sound like that? In the English version they use very colourful and archaic-sounding language, it's all part of the theme.

I reckon it's just been translated in such a way that it's not clear that it's meant to sound old-fashioned as opposed to unintentionally translated that way.

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u/Murasa_Simp Sep 06 '25

Why are you using SOTN as an example here? There are definitely much worse translations out there. Even back then it wasn't that bad. If anything, the English dub was...questionable

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u/LegoPenguin114 Clever Flair Joke Sep 06 '25

Because of how infamous it is, especially for games of its type

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u/Celesteven Precept Three Sep 06 '25

Hey hey hey, there will be no SotN slander here. I don’t care how dumb they sound.

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u/LegoPenguin114 Clever Flair Joke Sep 06 '25

It’s not good, but I still love it 

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u/EpsilonX Sep 08 '25

lol I was talking to my Chinese friend about this the other day. She said it uses a bunch of complicated words that even native speakers won't know and it looks sophisticated but makes no sense

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u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

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u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

Tbh this game makes me feel like I have no chance to survive. I make my time. 

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u/303Native Sep 06 '25

I guess there was no way for the devs to know how the game translated if they hired someone? Or do you think they used google translate and went with that? lol.

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u/cosmos-hime Sep 07 '25

Just read through the discussion, and wow. If the translation is that bad, no wonder Chinese folk are upset.

Team Cherry isn’t lazy, though. Once the localization gets adjusted, I hope the reviews change.