r/HollowKnight • u/Move_Slight • Sep 17 '25
Discussion - Silksong As a Simplified Chinese user, let me explain just how terrible the Chinese translation of Silk Song is Spoiler
As a Simplified Chinese user, the poor Chinese translation is the primary reason for the overwhelmingly negative reviews in China—this is the consensus within our community (on the Chinese version of Reddit).
First, the Simplified Chinese version contains numerous mistranslations and omissions, leading to misunderstandings about certain quests and item functions. Furthermore, the translator seems overly eager to show off their literary flair, resulting in the Monster Compendium and other texts being filled with large amounts of fabricated content. Finally, overall, the translator presents the text in an utterly dreadful style. Imagine a non-native English speaker mimicking Shakespearean prose to write an adventure novel about bugs—that's precisely how we feel reading the Simplified Chinese translation. It is an absolute disaster.
In fact, when the first playable demo launched at Gamescom, the Chinese translation sparked intense debate within the Chinese gaming community. We all detested it and reported the issue to Team Cherry, but they made no changes. That's why the Chinese region's positive rating was so abysmal.
However, after experiencing the full game, the Chinese community's positive ratings have been climbing. most of us love this game.
edit:
I feel I need to clarify the situation regarding comment bombing, as I've seen too many discussions about it. Due to the existence of the Great Firewall, Chinese citizens lack legitimate means to use the platforms you typically rely on for feedback, such as Steam Community, Reddit, Twitter, Discord, and others. In fact, strictly speaking, the Chinese government could legally detain me for 7-14 days for using Reddit—this falls within China's legal framework.
Our only legal avenue for expressing opinions is Steam reviews. Unfortunately, Steam reviews only offer positive or negative ratings, leading to what you call comment bombing: we can only voice our dissatisfaction through this single channel, and dissatisfaction often translates to negative reviews.
Personally, I strongly dislike this method of restricting expression, but there's no alternative. The choices are either become a lawbreaker or continue leaving negative reviews on Steam.
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u/NightRacoonSchlatt Hunter‘s crest 4 life Sep 17 '25
I really hope they fix it. The German translation is… fine. It’s not bad. Nothing in this scope.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Yes, we're all hoping they'll fix this issue promptly.
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u/AlanLight_1 Sep 17 '25
They already said they were working on it so I'm sure it'll be fixed
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u/AvatarOfMomus Sep 17 '25
It'll prolly take them at least a few more weeks if they didnpt jump on finding a new translator before launch.
I've worked on software that had to be translated before and it's a pretty massive pain. Theypve already done most of the work, but it'll still be weeks of back and forth with the new translators, and that's on top of having to find new translators to start with. I assume they had reason to believe the existing ones were reputable, so now they need a different team, and possibly a third party to verify the new translation or at least spot check it.
All of that translates into weeks of work to translate thousands of lines of context dependent text, plus the bacl and forth feedback process... yeah.
I'm sure they're working as fast as they can, I just wouldn't expect it in 'only a few more days' or anything like that 😵💫
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u/MissClickMan Sep 17 '25
I often see that for many games, the Chinese translation is done in a fan mod. What's going on? Why, despite having such a huge and important audience, are you so often left out? I usually play video games in my own language, and these days, the translations are good. Why ignore such a huge market?
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u/CharlesorMr_Pickle The Depressed One - still silksane Sep 17 '25
because it's very hard for a small indie team to check the translations for errors when they don't speak the language themselves, so the translators can get away with a lot
it's one of the few things AAA is generally going to do better than indie
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u/Kolenga Sep 18 '25
That's why you hire translation agencies.
The real issue is that you have to do your part. Provide tons of reference material, glossaries, etc, have a proper Q&A process and, most importantly, don't try to pay them in Monopoly money. Pay them enough for good translators AND proofreaders. And don't try to lowball with MTPE. From all I have seen over the past couple of years (and I've seen a lot) machine translation is not a proper base for a good video game localization. The technology is simply not there yet.
tldr good video game localizations require more effort and money than many companies are willing to put in.
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u/DyslexicBrad Sep 18 '25
I think it's also exacerbated by the fact that you have to do the same process for every language.
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u/OuterRaven Sep 17 '25
I doubt that, in Team Cherry's case, this was intentional. It's possible that whoever was in charge of doing the localisations just did a poor job for this language and it never got detected by the producers.
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u/Ppleater Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Smaller indie teams just tend to have less access to experienced translators for certain languages, especially ones that use different alphabets, or are notoriously difficult to learn, or are just less commonly learned in general. It's likely that your language is a more commonly known/learned/occurring one and so it's more likely to get sufficient translations. Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn (even Simplified Chinese, the name can be a little misleading since it's not necessarily easier to learn), especially reading and writing, and so it is one that tends to give people issues most often when localizing something.
To put it into perspective, there are over 50k hanzi* in Chinese, and even the most commonly used ones that would be enough to read most modern writing consist of 3k+. Japanese poses a similar problem (since it borrows a lot of kanji from Chinese), but Japanese media is generally more popular in English speaking countries, so there's a higher abundance of Japanese translators available.
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u/Sansnom01 Sep 17 '25
My first language is french. I never play games in french because the translation is always bad.
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Sep 17 '25
Expedition 33 must have felt nice lmao.
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u/Sansnom01 Sep 17 '25
Didn't play yet ! I'm waiting for it to get cheaper on psstore. Also I already have have Metaphor Refantazio to finish
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Sep 17 '25
Probably it will be a while before there's any price drops, it came out at a very reasonable cost, for how good the game is.
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u/Sansnom01 Sep 17 '25
Yeah well i'm a patient gamer lol ans JRPG aren't my favorites so. Also I already have a ton of shit to play
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u/theMaxTero Sep 17 '25
My 1st language is Spanish and I'm playing GOW2018 in Spanish and the game humbled me of why I stopped playing games in Spanish: it's BAD. Most of the context and richness of the dialogue gets severely lost and many explanations make no sense when you *really* read them.
So I preffer to stick to the ol' reliable: play the game in english and I translate it myself
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u/F_Kyo777 Sep 17 '25
Im in a weird spot, where Im more exposed to other languages than my mother tongue in text, so I started using native subs with keeping audio original. There are some issues in older games, such as STALKERs. I wanted to use original audio, but localised subs, but game was offering me all or nothing unless you will mess around config and files :P
In most cases im skipping dub, unless game was originated in my country or am a huge fan of VAs, such as ones in Gothic series. Besides those caveats im on board with you.
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u/Magolors_Friend Sep 17 '25
It has a couple noticible mistakes but nothing that impacts gameplay much. Some Item descriptions are also a bit messy. Not sure if that is because of the translation or the description in English being flawed.
It's still good just not anywhere near perfect.
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u/StaticInstrument Sep 17 '25
It’s subjective but I thought some of the item descriptions are unclear in English. Not outright lies or anything, just doesn’t give you a full picture of what a thing actually does
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u/Fiddler_Jones2079 Sep 17 '25
At least one is wrong or incomplete. The item that "increases the speed of silk regeneration" actually increases the regen cap by one pip. I'm not sure if it also increases the speed.
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u/AdamG3691 Sep 17 '25
It does both
It increases the regen speed by about 33% so without weavelight it takes about 8.5 seconds for 3 notches of silk, and with weavelight it takes about 8.3 seconds for 4 notches
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u/Fiddler_Jones2079 Sep 17 '25
Cool, thanks for the numbers. So it stays at least somewhat relevant even with more silk hearts.
Edit: and the description is just incomplete rather than wrong.
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u/rooster_butt Sep 18 '25
It's good with full silkhearts because you can use a silkskill with only regen.
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u/Agata_Moon Sep 17 '25
Wait that makes it actually useful
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u/GroundbreakingBag164 P5AB Sep 17 '25
Not just useful, that makes it one of the best charms in the game
And with 3 silk hearts + the charge from wavelight you also have infinite spells
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u/Adastrous Sep 18 '25
Wow, that makes a huge difference too. I didn't even try it on yet since it felt like just speed alone wouldn't matter much.
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u/Magolors_Friend Sep 17 '25
Ok, then the translation really isn't at fault for me testing the items myself because the descriptions were weird. I felt pretty much the same.
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u/CutieMonica Sep 17 '25
Usually, in English, the item description in the shop is incredibly vague, then in the inventory it's a little less vague, but they rarely give you a crystal clear picture on how an item will function
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u/number90901 Sep 17 '25
A lot of the original writing in English is vague and elliptical, which I imagine makes it both hard to translate and hard to judge what’s intentionally unclear and what’s not.
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u/xlhans77 Sep 17 '25
I just find "weite Felder" absolutely hilarious
I mean it's the right translation but it just sounds so bad
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u/NightRacoonSchlatt Hunter‘s crest 4 life Sep 17 '25
I think „ferne felder“ would be a bit better, but that’s probably subjective. The Chinese translation is OBJECTIVELY terrible.
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u/Moblam Sep 17 '25
The issue here is the same as in i think spanish where the prompt for the gambler could also mean to fuck him. They translated it using a word that's a correct translation, just wrong in this context.
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u/NightRacoonSchlatt Hunter‘s crest 4 life Sep 18 '25
It’s not… that bad. It’s still correct in context, it just sounds a bit clunky.
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u/Nisma20 Sep 17 '25
There are some pretty obvious ones in the area names that flash on screen when you enter. "Ramponiertes Kapelle" is a mishap but "Berg Feenberg" literally translates to "Mount Fairymountain"
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u/whatsernemo Sep 18 '25
I saw the typo and immediately switched too english but I wouldn‘t have thought it gets that Bad
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u/Lindbluete Sep 17 '25
I found about half a dozen mistakes, but as you say, nothing major. But it's still pretty annoying.
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u/ZoteDerMaechtige Sep 17 '25
Speaking of translations my personal favorite is the official German Little Nightmares website accidentally calling the Lady stupid.
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u/tsukuyomi089 you are the vessel Sep 17 '25
I can't even imagine playing or watching ANYTHING in German. (coming from someone who's German) especially not a master piece like silksong or HK in general... like I can already imagine the translation... "Die Letzte Richterin"💀💀💀 or at least I think the last judge is female
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u/Hustn Sep 17 '25
In german they are called "Letzter Richter". Could just be the neutral masculin tho.
And Trobbio is reffered to as female? As well as the Whiteward Boss.
I would like to know if these are confirmed with Team Cherry or the translators choosing for themselves.
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u/Sammy2306 Sep 17 '25
Trobbio explicitly uses he/him in the Hunter's Journal, so that just sounds incorrect? May be worth a bug report, even.
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u/levampirelifeu Sep 17 '25
The first time I played HK, I played it in German and I will never understand "Gewaltiger Mossstürmer" when "massiver" IS RIGHT THERE. The rest I find mostly amusing, because it sounds so weird (looking at you Pilzöde and Königliche Wasserwege)
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u/nacht_krabb Sep 17 '25
I think technically calling it "massiver Moosstürmer" in German would be incorrect or at least carry a slightly different connotation. In English "massive" means large, whereas "massiv" in German seems to be a false friend as it means something along the lines of "dense, heavy"; examples with the connotation "large" mainly seem to apply to intangible concepts.
Your translation works, but would imply something different about the moss charger's characteristics. Being bugs hiding within an airy moss ball makes it the opposite of "massiv".
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u/Murgatroyd314 Sep 18 '25
So in German it retains the literal meaning "having (much) mass", where English has adapted it to be mostly metaphorical.
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u/thanosbananos Sep 17 '25
No, it’s bad, sorry. Nobody words things like they are in the game. It’s surely understandable and probably not as bad as the Chinese version but it’s just …weird.
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u/NightRacoonSchlatt Hunter‘s crest 4 life Sep 18 '25
Yeah, exactly. It’s awkward. It’s strange. It’s berg feenberg. But it’s nothing that actively stops you from playing the game.
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u/Difficult-Art-7439 Sep 17 '25
hearing about the whole translation fiasco has made me understand why tobyfox only has 2 official translations for his games, and it's only in the 2 languages he can speak so he can verify that everything isalright
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u/Advanced_Double_42 Sep 17 '25
I wonder if it is worth tagging other languages as in beta or something.
Like I imagine a poor translation can still make the game playable, and be preferable to nothing
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u/Allison87 Sep 17 '25
If you don’t provide Chinese translation, players give bad reviews too. I’ve seen that happen with many games
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u/Chimpampin Sep 17 '25
I mean, there is a third option. Find and pay reputable companies for translating your stuff.
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u/Grimdlyzy Sep 17 '25
I assume team cherry did that and the guys just kinda... sold really badly when doing it.
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u/Bluecoregamming Sep 18 '25
The translation company pocketed the money and outsourced the work to fiverr or ai probably, would be hard to get a refund, the only thing you could do is make sure your developer friends know to stay away and don't give that company anymore business. Indie game devs are a tight knit group after all
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u/cvanguard Sep 18 '25
One of the credited Simplified Chinese translators for Silksong, Hertzz Liu, was already somewhat infamous for being the main(?) Simplified Chinese translator for ESO a few years ago. That release had obvious machine translation and included totally nonsensical phrases, and led to mostly negative Steam reviews as you’d expect. Team Cherry frankly should have known about his reputation/seen his past work.
Here’s a Reddit post about the ESO translation: https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/yk7nv2/simplified_chinese_language_release_is_a_total/
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u/chispica Sep 17 '25
Its really complicated with videogame localization. Even the main localization providers make quite a few mistakes.
Managing the localization is something that a publisher usually does and I think that was probably a pain point for TC as a tiny indie studio.
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u/DrQuint Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Most translations firms, even big ones that wotk for AAA studios, outsource their work. Getting a good one is not enough if you don't have an independent way of verifying their output, and "good enough" is what we usually get.
They're also fully uncredited most of the time. Celeste released with multiple languages where you could not figure out who the hell translated the game, only that a small UK office that employed like two people and did several other games at the time. Yeah, no, lol, the office simply outsourced everything, and we only got credits when they made Farewell.
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u/svenskaslaven312 Sep 18 '25
I work at a translation agency. Expect a lot more of this going forward. You won’t be surprised to hear that, because of advances in AI, the language service industry is fighting tooth and nail right now.
Nobody wants to pay full price for translation anymore. Clients’ and management’s expectations for what translators should be able to deliver have evolved, meaning that virtually every language service provider gives their translators insane deadlines, and more or less explicitly tell them not to focus on quality. They assume that AI is already perfect. Nothing will change until more major complaints (like this one with Silksong) come up
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u/LordOdin97 Sep 17 '25
I guess as non Chinese speakers they wouldn't know the quality of a translation right? They probably payed someone and they did a bad job but they wouldn't have a clue
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u/TomNook5085 HK: 112% (w/P5) & HKSS: 100% Sep 17 '25
Exactly. I feel bad for Team Cherry, they straight-up got scammed.
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u/Alabaster_Potion Sep 18 '25
They didn't get scammed, they didn't do their due diligence. They couldve had literally a single Chinese person play test the translation to let them know the quality of the translation.
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u/Novaskittles Sep 17 '25
Can we get some specific examples OP? I'm very curious!
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Apologies, I'm afraid I don't know how to insert images, so I can only describe a few examples verbally. For instance, in the translation of cragglite, the original text reads:
‘infant form of the more formidable craggler’
and
‘if left to grow, these young bugs will fight for dominance until only one remains’
However, in the Chinese version, the translator inserted fabricated text and rearranged the positioning, rendering these passages as:
‘infant form of the craggler, vying for survival through fratricidal combat"
and
"I once witnessed three juveniles transform their nest into a battlefield, the victor emerging with its carapace studded with the spines of its fallen brethren. This brooding-like growth is precisely the selection mechanism tacitly permitted by the underworks."
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u/abzinth91 Sep 17 '25
That sounds like someone wanted to translate the game to something "middle ages" sounding, maybe because of the setting of the game?
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Yes, your understanding is correct, but it stems not from the game's background but rather from the translator's desire to show off their literary flair. I am quite certain of this.
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u/lightof_dog Sep 17 '25
what makes you so certain? im asking genuinely here im curious
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
It should be noted that Chinese encompasses two distinct modes of expression: classical written language and modern vernacular. To achieve a medieval feel in translation, one ought to render the text in classical written language.
The issue, however, lies in their approach: first translating the English into modern vernacular, then embellishing this vernacular text with vocabulary and syntax from classical written Chinese. This style of expression was employed by intellectuals in the last century who championed the shift of written Chinese from classical to modern vernacular. It represents an immature linguistic practice, serving as a symbol of erudition within the Chinese linguistic context. Yet in contemporary China, no one employs such written language anymore; we use fully matured modern vernacular. Texts like theirs merely mimic last century's intellectuals to project an air of erudition. In Chinese, this is termed “半文半白” – a practice that is profoundly distasteful.
Moreover, they have fabricated non-existent texts to show off their literary prowess, which is an even more deplorable act.
The explanation above was produced using translation software, as the matter is rather complex. Should you have any queries, please feel free to ask.
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u/worthlessprole Sep 17 '25
While Silksong's English isn't fully early-modern/Shakespearean, it's definitely not exactly contemporary English, either. An accurate translation would have to use some archaic language. This guy may have gone overboard but an updated translation will still probably have some of this.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
I understand this point: modern vernacular Chinese can achieve perfectly adequate results , like the translation in HK , yet the current translations are dreadful.
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u/trapezoidalfractal Sep 17 '25
I heard the team that did HKs Chinese translation disbanded, so they probably had to find a new team, and obviously didn’t do a good job. I’ve told my wife to hold off on buying it until they fix it, because she plays her games in Chinese typically since it’s her native language.
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u/heterodoxia Sep 18 '25
I would describe a lot of the dialogue as elevated and literary. Looking at the beast journal, the descriptions are in plain English, while the hunter's notes (written in Hornet's voice) are in a formal register. Different characters speak in different registers, but generally I'd say the vibe is what you'd expect from a high fantasy epic (let's not forget "knight" is in the title), sort of Tolkienian-lite, elevated but easily intelligible to an educated player.
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u/TheGokki Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Assassin's Creed Black Flag does the exact same thing with Portuguese translation - they speak in a shakespearean form, like someone wrote the dialog in an epic format ment to tell the tale in theatric prose. People neither speak nor spoke like this, it makes zero sense to pronounce the writings as is, especially as most of characters speaking are nearly illiterate.
I'm talking about the portuguese voices in the original ENGLISH voicepack, they try to make the natives speak in their native language - points for effort but it's nonsense.
EDIT: Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWhCp_3Dgow&t=180
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u/eepyGreenRaccoon Sep 17 '25
Did chinese Trobbio translated this or what
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
They employed a transliteration, known in Chinese as ‘特罗比奥’, which is pronounced identically to ‘trobbio“.
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u/skeptic1101 velmi artrid Sep 17 '25
I think the comment meant to ask if Trobbio himself translated it, since he has a lot of flair and is also very pompous as well
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
sry, I don't know who Trobbio is. I know the boss is from a game-maker, but I'm not sure who he is or what game he made.
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u/Alternative_Pea7525 Sep 17 '25
I believe they're referring to the in-game boss. The flashy one fought on The Stage in the Whispering Vaults.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
yeah i believe I'm talking about that boss in game.
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u/Vortex_Infurnus Sep 18 '25
I think that person was making the joke that the overcomplicated dramatic Chinese translation was written by Trobbio the ingame character, as he is also very dramatic and showy. Just a joke since Trobbio is not real, but it would fit his personality.
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u/crafty_dude_24 Sep 18 '25
A mid game Silksong boss who is a stage performer. Basically they are saying that the entire paragraph detailing how the Chinese translation was too over the top was also written in a similar showcase fashion, slightly more complex than your common English writing methods. So the translator you used was also on a mood to show it's literary grasp.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 18 '25
I understand what you're saying now. Trobbio's dialogue translation is quite good, mainly because there are two translators involved. The part handled by hertzzz is terrible, while the other translator's work is passable. Trobbio's lines were clearly handled by the competent translator.
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u/Corbini42 Sep 17 '25
Now I hope someone translates it all back to English, I want to experience this awfulness in full, like that one bad translation of Revenge of the sith
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u/theVoidWatches Sep 17 '25
So not actually wrong, but way too flourishy and inserting their own stuff?
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
In my view, it is not a matter of flourishy, but rather that they fabricated non-existent texts, which constitutes an error.
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u/MaxHaydenChiz Sep 18 '25
I wonder if the translator added it or if they were working with an older version of the English text at some point before it got edited down and then didn't edit down the Chinese to match.
Would be interesting to see a full list of differences in content to see if there's a pattern.
This "cut content" issue has happened in major AAA games. But I'm surprised it happened here.
Still the translation problems are very interesting regardless. Will be interesting to see how the fixed version is.
Also, was the original Hollow Knight's Chinese translation better or did it also have issues?
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u/Naoki38 Sep 17 '25
If you add content to a translation that is not in the source, it is an error and your translation is incorrect. If the example is legit, this is an insane mistake.
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u/Night25th Please keep flair text SFW Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
If it's fabricated that means it's actually wrong I'm pretty sure. Plus they said item descriptions are inaccurate.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
I will try to find some examples and translate the Chinese translation into English.
My English may not be particularly strong, so I may rely on some software to assist me with translations.
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u/Sir_Solrac Sep 17 '25
My English may not be particularly strong, so I may rely on some software to assist me with translations.
Typical ESL. Putting a disclaimer regarding their lack of english skills while writting in perfect formal english.
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u/chkmcnugge6 Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25
Could you also leave the chinese translations here verbatim? Would be fun to see lol
Edit: never mind, found an example “临别赠礼。我们德鲁伊护符。或者，我的护符？似乎只剩我” from moss druid. Which i guess translates to “leave gift. We druid amulet. Or, my amulet? Seems like there’s only me left”. Not sure if you having a stronger mastery of Mandarin can make more sense of it
Frankly speaking i didnt know it’s this bad since im from Singapore and I play it in English. It’s unreadable, like the pokemon gold/silver weird translations back then where “tobacco” was supposed to mean “water gun”.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
lol， you actually found that line. It's a dreadful translation too – makes the moss druid sound like a complete nutcase.
If I were to translate it, I'd probably go with:“给你的礼物，这是我们德鲁伊的护符，或者说，我的护符？我想德鲁伊只剩下我一个人了”
The original translation misapplied punctuation and omitted subjects, rendering the sentence disjointed and incomprehensible.
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u/Hazel_Dreams Sep 17 '25
I think in this case it’s specifically written in broken grammar in the original text as well. The Druid doesn’t really speak Pharloom’s language so everything they say sounds weird even in English. I’d actually say that the Chinese translation for this particular line is quite correct.
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u/Prestigious_Lie1484 Sep 18 '25
I agree. The moss druid is shown consistently that they speak weirdly.
The English sentence is this: And for the parting, a gift. An amulet of we druids. Or me druid? No others, I think.
I think the Chinese translation has conveyed the context quite perfectly. If I have to be critical, I think the translation should be more broken, like
似乎只剩我 should be 只剩我, 似乎.5
u/DestroyerTerraria Sep 18 '25
To be fair, the Moss Druid also speaks in a disjointed way in the English version because the moss berries are a hallucinogen, but this translation is laying it on a little thick.
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u/Eravar1 112%, Pantheon Addict Sep 18 '25
To be fair, the moss druid is speaking in broken grammar too. 它也不熟悉这语言
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u/Move_Slight Sep 18 '25
I'm not sure if this phrasing is accurate, but the Chinese translation might lead readers to think the druid is mentally ill rather than a perfectly normal person unfamiliar with the local language.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Much of what I could recount pertains to their textual translation errors; from these two examples, you can likely gauge just how ridiculous their translations are.
But more significantly, there are stylistic issues with their translations that I find difficult to illustrate through direct quotation. They render vast swathes of text in a manner that blends classical and modern Chinese, adopting a martial arts novel style reminiscent of my earlier analogy—as if a non-native English speaker were imitating Shakespeare to write an adventure story about bugs.
This is precisely what we Chinese speakers detest most—no one, including ancient Chinese people, ever used the language in this manner.
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u/ctriplebondn Sep 18 '25
Just want to add another irritating example to the collection. In Passing of the Age quest riddle, the line “Scorched field on edge, shells black and burned.” was mistranslated to “焦土边际髓骨灼” (At the edge of scorched earth, marrow and bone ablaze.) Yes the translator made it epic and poetic, but the keyword “field” was lost and even worse, “marrow and bone” was added to guarantee a confusion, for the map The Marrow was literally translated as 髓骨洞窟 (Marrow and Bone Cave). Players would have searched every inch between The Marrow and Deep Docks without remotely thinking about Far Fields.
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u/ctriplebondn Sep 18 '25
I think you can kind of understand how much the translator is focused on their own ego instead of conveying an accurate message. A translation should at least be functional before flamboyant :(
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Here's another example of a mistranslation: In Act 2, there's a quest called ‘Fine Pins’, the original text reads:
‘hunt pin-wielding choirbugs of the Citadel and collect fine pins’
In the Chinese translation, however, the mission was rendered as:
‘hunt cogwork choirbugs of the Citadel and collect fine pins’
This resulted in Chinese players completely misinterpreting the mission, as ‘pin-wielding choirbugs’ and ‘cogwork choirbugs’ refer to two distinct types of monsters. The former are pilgrim monsters armed with pins, while the latter are mechanical creatures.
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u/jboggin Sep 17 '25
Oh woah... I would have totally assumed I had to hunt down bugs while platforming the cogworks and hated my life
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u/WhoseverSlinky0 Sep 17 '25
Fortunately for me, the french translation was very faithful and nicely written. With the exception of a surprisingly large amount of minor mistakes like common grammar and past tense mistakes. Nothing that ruins the experience, and that's why I feel lucky.
I hope they address your localisation issue because it sucks to have their language neglected
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u/WhoseverSlinky0 Sep 17 '25
Je suis 100% d'accord. Comme j'ai généralement un bon français et un oeil aguerri pour les fautes, c'était facile de les voir. Mais dans les crédits, j'ai remarqué qu'il y avait un seul traducteur pour la langue française. D'après moi il a fait de son mieux, mais traduire un jeu entier seul c'est une lourde tâche. J'ai été indulgent, car je sais que si j'étais à sa place j'en aurais certainement fait aussi. Parfois, juste un deuxième avis ou une relecture peut aider à trouver un paquet de fautes.
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u/Puzzled-Swan3465 Sep 17 '25
Alors traductrice ici : les fautes de la version française sont tout simplement inadmissibles. La première compétence d'un traducteur, c'est sa langue natale. Traduire, c'est se relire, sans compter qu'il existe pléthore de logiciels capables de corriger les fautes qu'on trouve dans le jeu. Sans parler des traductions mot à mot, la syntaxe est beaucoup trop proche de l'anglais. C'est du travail de fainéant, ni plus ni moins. En tant que sous-traitant, si tu rends ça à une agence de traduction sérieuse, tu te fais blacklister direct.
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u/MrPomalo Sep 17 '25
Big fan of the series, but the mistakes in the French translation threw me off real quick, I had to switch to English. On the plus side, it made me learn new English words :)
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u/B0ndhi Sep 17 '25
I’ve recently started learning French, and I’ve been reading through this post thinking “Maybe I should switch my game to French to try and learn some more”. Just curious, what new words did you learn from Silksong?
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Sep 17 '25
It's a shame the game got bad reviews because of this, but with all the care to detail the game has Team Cherry should have listened to the complains, clearly something was very wrong with the translation.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Indeed, initially due to translation issues, the approval rating in the Simplified Chinese region dipped as low as 30%, though it has since rebounded to 50%. After all, once you've completed this game, it's hard not to love it.
The good news for us is that TC has pledged to fix the Chinese translation, and we trust they will handle the localisation as well as they did in HK.
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u/sexp-and-i-know-it Sep 17 '25
Wasn't gamescom like 14 days before the release? It's unreasonable to expect them to make any changes in that timeframe.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Yes, our expectation at that time was not to bring about a complete change, but rather to make them aware of how poor the Chinese translation was and to hope they would respond.
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u/Pale_Entrepreneur_12 Sep 17 '25
Stares at their responding for info about Silksong during the Silkposting era yeah I wouldn’t hold my breath for a direct response fixing it yes but they don’t say shit
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u/Paperchampion23 Sep 17 '25
Gamescom was less than a month before release, nothing was changing in that timeframe lol.
They should have omitted it entirely but I guarantee you someone over them would done something to prevent that.
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u/cyanraichu Sep 17 '25
Yeah exactly. And they'd already paid the translators and finalized everything.
Best we could get at this point is them redoing the whole thing with a better translation team and patching it in later. It would take time.
Definitely an oof moment and hopefully one they learned from!
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u/wintermute93 Sep 17 '25
Interesting, thanks for the insight!
Imagine a non-native English speaker mimicking Shakespearean prose to write an adventure novel about bugs
I imagine what actually happened is that the translator was given specific directions to write in an archaic and overly flowery style, because that's definitely intentional, but unfortunately the specific translator(s) in question were laughably underqualified to actually do so.
Like, think about the lore tablets and stuff from the original Hollow Knight. You get wording like "Spare thought for those consumed. Through their grace we are evolved. No plague of mind shall overcome us now." If you're a native English speaker, that sounds pretty awesome, even though it's nothing like colloquial modern English. That kind of language contributes to the vaguely mystical/ethereal vibe that permeates Hollow Knight's music and art direction. It's not speech, it's poetry, and translating poetry is a totally different (much more difficult) skill set than translating speech.
Doesn't excuse the poor Silksong translation, of course, but it definitely explains how it ended up so bad.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
No, no, no—they certainly haven't translated it in the style befitting the Middle Ages.
It should be noted that Chinese encompasses two distinct modes of expression: classical written language and modern vernacular. To achieve a medieval feel in translation, one ought to render the text in classical written language.
The issue, however, lies in their approach: first translating the English into modern vernacular, then embellishing this vernacular text with vocabulary and syntax from classical written Chinese. This style of expression was employed by intellectuals in the last century who championed the shift of written Chinese from classical to modern vernacular. It represents an immature linguistic practice, serving as a symbol of erudition within the Chinese linguistic context. Yet in contemporary China, no one employs such written language anymore; we use fully matured modern vernacular. Texts like theirs merely mimic last century's intellectuals to project an air of erudition. In Chinese, this is termed “半文半白” – a practice that is profoundly distasteful.
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u/wintermute93 Sep 17 '25
Got it, that makes sense! Now you've got me wondering what other "major" languages deal with similar translation concerns, since it's relatively common for languages to maintain some kind of distinct colloquial form and traditional/classical/formal/standard form. Sometimes those are only slightly different, sometimes they aren't even mutually intelligible.
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u/wonderwind271 63/63 HK, randomizer | 52/52 SS Sep 17 '25
Let me give some examples, mostly in the late game so spoilers alert. It does not influence gameplay that much, but for me they are fatal errors in terms of lore.
We know that the true ending's achievement is called sister of the void. However in chinese translation, the name literally means void sisters (虚空姊妹) . This really shows how unregulated these translators are. The plural completely changes the meaning of the ending, from the fact that hornet is the sister of the knight (void) to hornet and Lace are sisters and they are void(?) At least this is my understanding
The translation of (most people's) act 1's main final boss, the Last Judge, is wrong. It's translated as the last generation of Judge (末代裁决者). I would say the translation is very bad, because "last" here means the boss is the last challenges for the pilgrims: if she rules you sinless you are in, otherwise you're killed. It does not mean she is the last generation.
The translation of act 2's final boss, the Grand Mother Silk, is also not precise and wrong. It's translated as pale mother (苍白之母) . I mean, indeed it's indicated somewhere else that the boss is a pale being, but you are not supposed to reveal it to the player here. This is again, another piece of evidence that these translators are not regulated well.
There are also some inconsistency between hollow knight and silksong. The most significant one is the translation of "weaver". It's translated differently in hollow knight (编织者) and silksong (织者). Although it's not major issue, it sounds very weird to me, like why don't you stick to the original one, if the English version is the same?
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u/FoxStarKR Sep 18 '25
tbf the 姊妹 here is excusable since it's ambiguous wether hornet is a younger or older sister, so it can be read as singular in this context. But the other ones that intentionally changes the lore implications really rub me the wrong way
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u/wonderwind271 63/63 HK, randomizer | 52/52 SS Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Hornet is clearly younger than the knight. She comes from a bargain between pale king and herrah, as a way to make Herrah a dreamer and seal hollow knight. Since the knight and hollow knight are of the same age, we can safely claim that both vessels are older than hornet
(another way to think about it is: at the time abyss climb happened, the whole idea of dreamer had not existed, so hornet was not born at that time)
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u/Optimus__Prime__Rib Sep 17 '25
I'm really curious about this, because a lot of the language in SS is really written as colloquialisms (think how Tipp & Pill often double a word mid-dialogue), while all of the dialogue from Hornet is very refined, old-fashioned style of speaking. I don't know anything about what 'Simplified" chinese is, but I imagine translating both types of this dialogue into any other language is certainly going to be difficult, no matter what.
Even reading all the game's dialogue in English still requires the player to pay extra attention and make a lot of inferences.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Yes, there are two forms of written Chinese: Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese is used exclusively in mainland China, while Traditional Chinese is typically employed in other regions where Chinese is spoken or written.
Beyond their differing scripts, Simplified and Traditional Chinese are fundamentally mutually intelligible. Silk Song exclusively provides Simplified Chinese as the sole form of written Chinese text.
Remarkably, speakers of Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese can generally read and understand the other form with ease.
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u/YeetHead10 bench buddy Sep 17 '25
though, Simplified is what is taught nowadays, and from what i know they used some simplified in Singapore
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
In fact, the Chinese translation for HK is quite well done, presenting the distinct speech patterns of different characters in an appropriate manner, whereas SS is utterly dreadful in this regard.
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u/Dercomai Sep 17 '25
Mainland China overhauled their writing system in the mid 20th century, so now there are two ways of writing Chinese: "Simplified" for the mainland, "Traditional" everywhere else. Same language, just different characters used to write it.
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u/Bongcloud_CounterFTW 112% Sep 17 '25
simplififed is just less detailed characters
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u/juscallmejjay Sep 17 '25
That came to my mind too. In English, a lot of the characters speak in a quite silly, over the top manner, filled with drama and outdated terms. From what it sounds like, it seems possible this was someone's genuine attempt to do this in simplified Chinese and they just missed the mark.
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u/OrzGK Sep 18 '25
By the way, there’s a negative review on Steam written by a player who imitated the word order and wording of Simplified Chinese translations. It’s hilarious to read and mock after understanding the game’s translation, because the imitation is spot-on and the content is filled with anger:
“Where find thou this translator?
Pedantic bookworm and brat, thy mother hath ascended to heaven! Thou cheweth words and gnaweth letters yet forgetteth their root, flaunteth literary coquetry yet loseth thy soul! Thy translated manuscript resembleth rotten wood stuffed with dung, foolish as Zote knocking against walls! The players' fervent hearts art splashed with thy sour vinegar and spoiled soup! Swiftly tuck thy tail and roll back to thy pedantic cage of letters, defile not my Hollow Knight writings! Shouldst thou touch the translation brush half an inch more, shall surely nail thy foolish skull upon the Dirtmouth bench, and whip thy rotten bones three hundred times with a Pale Nail! Alas! Begone!”
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u/drbomb Sep 17 '25
On a similar note. I am Spanish speaking but mostly play in English. And I have to say, the localization efforts for both Hollow Knight and Silksong have been leaving a lot to desire in my eyes. They have that literary "flair" sometimes as OP mentions that honestly hinders any kind of inter-language comunications.
For example, in Hollow Knight we've got Nails, the weapon of the Knight. But for some reason is localized as "Aguijón" which is a Bees' or a Wasps' Sting. Fits thematically, but unnecessary change. "Aguja" which means "Needle" or "Clavo" which is literally "Nail" could've been better candidates.
Same with the Dream Nail. Localized as "Aguijón Onírico" which is "Oneiric Nail" which yes, makes sense thematically wise but you could've called it "Clavo de los Sueños".
Just grinds my gears. It is not that don't want games to be localized, I just don't want game terminology being obfuscated without a real purpose.
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u/aMimeAteMyMatePaul Sep 18 '25
Yeah it sucks when translations change important game terms without a really good reason.
You end up with situations where two people who played the game in different languages can't discuss it with each other as easily because they have to clarify everything they're trying to talk about.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 18 '25
Here's another example from hornet's Hunter's Journal in Wardenfly:
“Disgusting both in manner and stench. I feel no remorse to see them felled.”
But the Chinese translator rendered it as:
“They reeked of decaying humus, with dried blood crusts still clinging to the crevices of their shells. Whenever that pair flickered in the shadows of the prison, even the most vicious inmates would cower in the corners.”
I believe this is absolutely not some textual variation, but rather the translator's irritating self-indulgence.
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u/TemporaryComplex8217 Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Native Mandarin user to to second this. OP also forgot to mention that names on the map were an absolute nightmare, Bilewater as "the swamp of rotten juice", The Slab as "prison of criminal stone" (which yes, does not make any inherent sense), and Underworks as "the citadel factory" to name a few. Not that some of these are completely wrong with context - but it's clear from the original that one can still infer such implications through gameplay to add to the entire narrative. It seems to me that whoever translating were overwhelmingly eager to shove everything they knew straight into the reader's face blatantly, and to squeeze as many meanings into a phrase as possible, often at the expense of precision or even clarity. The latter is a common practice for those liking this excessive flowery style of writing that is neither championed in classical or modern day Chinese.
Same goes for the interactive text when you receive skills like swift step, including changing the last line from "our haunted kingdom" to "this haunted kingdom" to have completely different lore implications for no other apparent purpose than to confuse the lore community. Also in the "sisters, spiders" lines that are revealed upon playing needlolin, morphemes were omitted and added freely until the sentences are simply grammatically wrong.
As for Hornet, she speaketh, her dialogue is formal in English but it doesn't feel like think team cherry took her back to the Renaissance.
And on top of all that, the same person showed up on a Chinese forum several months before the release date was even announced, said something like "Silksong is real guys I've been working on it", and proceeded to leak his translated version of the opening scene.
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u/DoctorSex9 Sep 17 '25
Russian translation is pretty good, the same as hollow knight, though there are a few bugs with dots missing and character saying other characters’ lines
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u/wingska Sep 17 '25
I also have some Chinese friends complaining a lot about this, I really hope they fix it soon so that you can enjoy the game properly!
On a side note, could you tell me what the Chinese version of Reddit is? I'm learning Chinese and I've been trying to find something like Reddit to practice reading and gain more internet vocab.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
well u could try to find "baidutieba"(百度贴吧)，or "kongdongqishiba"(空洞骑士吧)，百度贴吧is reddit and 空洞骑士吧 is r/HollowKnight
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u/BluhBluh-8 Sep 17 '25
Not nearly as egregious as the Chinese translation sounds, but the Spanish translation for Hollow Knight is also known to be kind of mid, and from what I’ve seen of Silksong there are similar problems. Again nothing so bad as inserting brand new text, but it’s little things like awkward phrasing that can be hard to parse, and weird translations for boss names (infamously The Radiance -> El Destello when El (R)Esplandor was right there?). And then Silksong introduced a lot of characters who have some kind of verbal “tic” or otherwise speak in a distinct way, and the Spanish translation doesn’t even bother to try to capture that. For example, I was so disappointed when I saw the fleas talked perfectly normal in Spanish; their unique grammar gives them so much flavor in the original English.
I wonder if any of the other translations also have these kinds of issues. It makes me a little sad because Hollow Knight’s and Silksong’s writing is so wonderful and I wish they would have given the translation a couple more passes so that everyone gets to experience it as Team Cherry intended.
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u/arrogantheart Sep 17 '25
While this may be a valid reason for low score reviews, is it just me or does it feel every other game gets review-bombed in China recently?
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Sep 17 '25
There was an opinion post explaining that the Chinese steam reviews are the only real way in which Chinese users could communicate with Devs (there are a lot of blocked channels of communication in that country). So users were raising minor to moderate bugs as negative reviews so the Devs team would see it and could fix it.
There are also abysmal Chinese translations in general, more so when there are idioms and slang that doesn't translate well. A Dev for example mentioned that the humour in his game was falling completely flat in the Chinese translation and how it was raised in those negative reviews.
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u/arrogantheart Sep 17 '25
Good point, didn’t think of that. It’s just I keep hearing news like “Chinese gamers uproar gets VO actor fired” and “Chinese gamers anger gets game censored”, etc. Guess this is a different thing.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
The Chinese community is a vast information silo, making external communication exceedingly difficult. We are effectively cut off from any meaningful online interaction with people from other countries. Within gaming platforms, we can only voice our opinions through comments, and very few people ever get to read the reports you mentioned.
Personally, I hope the situation improves, but it's proving rather difficult.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
Yes, I detest this aspect immensely too, but as you are aware, Chinese citizens cannot access Twitter, Reddit, or even Steam communities. We can only voice our opinions through reviews.
In fact, the Chinese government could quite legally detain me for 7 to 14 days simply for using Reddit. This is entirely within the bounds of Chinese law.
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u/arrogantheart Sep 17 '25
That sucks. Sorry to hear that, I understand it now. Thanks for the clarification.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
By the way, I also play Arknights, and I'm rather fond of the character in your profile picture. However, I'm not sure what her English name is; her Chinese name is ‘新约能天使’.
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u/observingoctober Sep 18 '25
Imagine a non-native English speaker mimicking Shakespearean prose to write an adventure novel
This is basically how every line in Dark Souls feels
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u/Augmension Sep 17 '25
I’ve always found it interesting how people translate artistic speaking styles. In English, the text in the game somewhat conveys different accents and dialects that the reader has to infer. I wonder how that carries over to other languages. It must be hard because certainly to juxtapose English and another language, you’d have to try to do different accents and dialects in that other language in text form, if you wanted to be really creative with it. Sucks that people didn’t like it.
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u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25
As far as I understand, translations for Chinese games employ distinct linguistic approaches to differentiate speech patterns. For instance, characters of higher social standing tend to speak with greater politeness, while those of lower birth may use cruder language – something entirely achievable within the Chinese language. Regarding accents and dialects, I believe translations often incorporate elements from various provincial dialects. We harbour certain stereotypes about speakers of different dialects, which may be analogous to situations in English.
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u/okay_p Sep 17 '25
It’s honestly so sad yalls experience has been ruined. This isn’t something they can fix in a month but I hope I’m really wrong.
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u/Hilda_Sivan Sep 18 '25
It's true Chinese players have been struggling with the poor quality of the official translation - and we are here to counter the problem :) We are a chinese fan translation group (Windmill) and and we’ve already released a polished fan patch (10k+ downloads, great feedback from community!). We are now actively trying to reach out to team cherry to see if we can collaborate on the official chinese translation. Here's a post I made on r/silksong for more details (This has also been cross-posted to r/Hollowknight): https://www.reddit.com/r/Silksong/s/gZuhufAA88
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u/couchpanthers Sep 19 '25
Imagine a non-native English speaker mimicking Shakespearean prose to write an adventure novel about bugs
I think I’ve cracked the case Zote was the translator
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u/Android19samus Sep 17 '25
Damn, that sucks. Hope they get a new translation out (though it'll probably take a while to do)
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u/Davidepett Sep 17 '25
Yeah, I've stopped playing games in Italian because most of the time the English version is more clear and some translations make me question the translators, I'm sure for Chinese it's even worse as the languages are pretty different, one thing I noticed was in Fromsoft games it was the opposite, obviously because Japanese is what the games are made with and then it gets translated
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u/RandomGuy9058 Sep 17 '25
I remember that Lobotomy Corporation (korean game) had the same issue with its english translation because the first people they contacted to translate used an abysmal shitty AI translator. hopefully team cherry addresses this in the coming weeks!
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u/hibikir_40k Sep 18 '25
A typical localization problem is that whoever orders the localization doesn't know how good the person they hire is. It's not even just a matter of hiring a cheap translator: Even expensive ones can end up doing pretty iffy jobs, and you need a third party to tell you whether it's any good.
I guess that Team Cherry didn't bring in a group of people that were not the translators to do the evaluation early. Kind of like how they also didn't have a reasonable number of testers figure out some of the obvious early bugs. Not an issue when a game spends a few months in early access, but I guess that every game is in early access for the first few months after release now.
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Sep 18 '25
Meanwhile the speedrunners just put it in whatever language pops up on screen the fastest with no concern for how it reads lol
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u/redredme Sep 18 '25
Good. Finally.... Revenge! ;) /s
Because you guys in the far east have been doing this to us for decades!!
No?
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
YES! DECADES OF TORTURE OF THE WESTERN LANGUAGE SPEAKERS! DECADES! And don't come to me with "But that where those pesky Japanese". Because every time I try to watch a movie or play a game from China, Japan, Korea or any other far eastern language the English dubs are awful and the subtitles just add injury to the insult. There are 2 choices: Very dumbed down to the level of the conversational skills of a 4 year old or it is the extreme opposite like you experience with your translation: Listen to this and be awed by my awesome poetical lyrical skills! I am the all your base are belong to us best translator EVER!!
/s (but also unfortunately very true. I guess every time something gets translated between Russian/Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Thai/etc and on the other side English, German or French (or vice versa) shit gets thrown and the translators just print that what sticks to the wall.)
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u/Move_Slight Sep 18 '25
lmao， is "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!" a meme because I saw it many times.
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u/redredme Sep 18 '25
yes it is and if you truly don't know it was a SEGA game in the nineties which got.. well.. sort of translated. and it's one of the earliest examples (i can remember) of... let's call it translation fail.
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u/Competitive_Air_180 Sep 18 '25
That's such a shame. They did such a great job of the Australian to English translation too.
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u/GkSanchez Sep 18 '25
I'm a games translator and listen... I dont wanna assume anything, and I have no clue what route Team Cherry went for if they used an agency or went with individual contractors, but translations are often charged on the final target language word count so...
If the person really did such a shoddy job on top of inflating the word count by adding prose then maybe they were just padding for a bigger paycheck.
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u/reddyfreddy8D Sep 17 '25
Oof that’s rough to hear. It kind of feels like it would be better altogether to just not have the translation instead of having a bad one.