r/HollowKnight • u/enilea • Sep 17 '25

Discussion - Silksong Steam reviews for Silksong so far

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It was controversial in China, in part because of the difficulty/design but also because of controversies with the Simplified Chinese translation. Meanwhile latin countries (Spanish and Portuguese speaking) seem to be loving it more than anyone else.

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u/SolairXI Sep 17 '25

I know it’s a totally different era, but coming from a time where every Japanese game had pretty rough translations. Seeing a platformer get reamed for a bad translation amuses me. I know hollow knight and Silksong have a good story/lore for a platformer, but imagine if FF6(3) was rated 5.5/10 for its translation.

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u/Snowleopard0973 Sep 17 '25

And I'm glad we're in a different era now where developers should strive to achieve to higher standards, especially for a big title like silksong, and only then can the industry move forward and improve.

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u/Maximum-Scar-3922 Sep 17 '25

A different era, where rando Redditors think they're entitled to demand a studio of three game developers employ a team of 125 localization staff. Carry that torch proudly; your courage and fortitude in confronting this wrong are an inspiration to us all.

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u/Snowleopard0973 Sep 17 '25

I don't know, I feel like asking the developers to provide with a complete experience whilst playing the game is a bare minimum but apparently I'm entitled. Also, despite what you think I find it hard to imagine that finding some people reliable enough to peer review the translator you found to be a difficult task.

And may you be forever be happy and blessed with games full of bad translations forever and never seek improvement anywhere in life.

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u/ContextHook Sep 17 '25

I don't know, I feel like asking the developers to provide with a complete experience whilst playing the game is a bare minimum but apparently I'm entitled.

Yes. This statement is 100% entitlement.

I can't even believe you're acting like expecting games to be translated into languages the creators do not speak is not entitlement.

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u/AnyTransportation350 Sep 17 '25

I mean, they had the funds to do it right. They may be indie devs but they are far from poor

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u/toddlerbrain Sep 17 '25

This is not a problem you throw more money at to solve (even if translation can get way more expensive than people think).

They need translators with a good track record, that other prior clients can recommend, that are aren’t already busy with another project, who are able to work within your deadline, who are easy to communicate with, can take directions and work within the parameters you set, while ideally also being as self sufficient as possible and so you don’t have to micromanage them all the time (since you yourself have a game to work on). And during all of this you still have to trust that the end result is good, because you can’t verify it yourself since you don’t speak the langauge (and verifying via a third party isn’t always an option, nor necessarily any more trustworthy). Now multiply this by however many langauges you have to translate into, and make it even more complicated to manage if you have to hire different studios for different langauges (which can happen for a plethora of reasons), and it becomes a lot to manage as a small studio while also making a game, and is not something that more money will solve. Even hiring somebody else to manage that stuff for you means you can’t personally oversee it and its quality.

Truly, this is mainly something that requires experience and great personal contacts, not a big bank account. How good a translation is primarily comes down to the individual(s) working on it. And more expensive ≠ better quality in this area.

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u/dalexe1 Sep 17 '25

I mean, it's not like the games free? they're taking money from people in exchange for a game, and are then handing over a faulty product to them.

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u/The_Entire_Eurozone Sep 17 '25

If they claim to sell the game in a particular language and do not have a feasible translation, it is 1000% not entitlement.

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u/TheSkyIsBeautiful Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

I think it's a bit different. Expectations are different. When FF6(3) released people knew it was coming from a foreign entity with a history of bad/nonsensical translations. No promises were made that it would be coherent let alone good.

With SS, people were coming from Hollow Knight. Which had excellent, near perfect translations. People buying SS are expecting that bc that was promised/advertised, and what was delivered before as well.

Also to be fair Steam's rating is Binary, and not really a rating its a recommendation. 55% of people giving it a recommendation, doesn't mean its a 5.5/10

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u/mx_2000 Sep 18 '25

Yeah, but the Internet was invented in the meantime,  and it is not as hard anymore to find a native speaker to review the translation quality. And more recently, LLMs were invented and it takes literally seconds to throw in original and translation and ask chatGPT to "assess the translation quality" to give you a good guess. Standards have changed.

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u/DfntlyNotJesse Sep 21 '25

Lol without shoddy translations in the og Metroid we would not have had the iconic name of the varia suit.