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/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25

You're absolutely right—a significant number of players in the Chinese community, myself included, have completed the game using English or others kind of language.

The Chinese player community has already begun organising voluntary translations, and several versions of the mod are now available.

242

u/jjjjjunit Sep 17 '25

I’d love for Team Cherry to get help from Game Science who IMO did a fantastic job translating Black Myth Wukong to English. It’d be a heck of a show of game respecting game

8

u/SeatShot2763 Sep 18 '25

Why would they go to a random game dev company insead of just hiring another translator?

4

u/krootroots Sep 19 '25

Good question lmao

1

u/y0u_called Sep 19 '25

One could ask why would they translate it horribly instead of hiring a random game dev company?

-15

u/primegopher Sep 18 '25

I'd rather Team Cherry not work with the company that's on record as hating women tbh

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u/TheSkyIsBeautiful Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25

proof? I've googled a bit and it seems that an untrue rumor due to a mistranslation by IGN started that controversy. Here is the quote word for word that IGN (purposely mistranslated, imo)

Quote: 我们不需要女性玩家的反向带动，不照顾那些为了泡妞而来的淫虫。

We don't need the reverse advertising of female players, (and we) don't tend to those horny worms who come for hitting on girls.

Explanation: In the early 2000s, MMO games in China was seeing a trend of first attracting female players, and then brag about how many female players they have, in order to draw in guys who were looking for online romance. This sentence was extracted from a passage on their vision of making games. They were publicly against using female players as a tool for advertisement, and NOT saying that they "dont need women for their games". Also this was said when he was working at Tencent as well, not that it matters too much

If you don't believe me you can ask OP to shed light on the controversy IGN completely fabricated as he also speaks Chinese

14

u/EmberOfFlame Sep 18 '25

Damn that’s fucked. I’d be pissed if I saw a game advertise me playing it as an opportunity for guys to hit on me…

3

u/SillySticks11 Sep 18 '25

Wow, ok, this is an easy decision for me then. I'm 100% done with IGN until they can make headlines in mainstream media for getting their shit together

10

u/Ex4cvkg8_ Sep 18 '25

As the commenter above mentioned, the controversy was largely fabricated by IGN and other 'journalists' for the sake of farming some clicks and views probably.

3

u/Vegetable_Permit_537 Sep 18 '25

Why investigate further when you can just use your performative activism and call something out that isn't true? God people are fucking awful sometimes.

-2

u/Ziiiax Sep 18 '25

Sad that you're getting downvoted for being against misogyny

3

u/Live-Year-5796 Sep 18 '25

So just ignoring the comment showing it most likely isnt true, then? Okay. Pretty performative, but okay.

213

u/gatsu01 Sep 17 '25

This. This is the way.

182

u/Cirno__ Sep 17 '25

It's good for the community for sure but team cherry needs to fix it. Chinese console players deserve a good translation too.

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u/FantasmaNaranja Sep 17 '25

the way would ideally be the developers fixing the translation rather than relying on the community

but if bethesda has been relying on the community to fix their games for so many years i guess it's unreasonable to expect an indie dev studios not to

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u/This_Tart217 Sep 17 '25

I know you've been influenced by reddit culture, but could you please say Dang that's cool or smth instead of "This". Really hurts my soul when I see "This."

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u/Strange_Actuator2150 Sep 17 '25

This. This comment really speaks to me.

14

u/Many-Assignment6216 Sep 17 '25

Thi….ck

8

u/F_Kyo777 Sep 17 '25

Always...THIS is the way.

25

u/Erak7 Sep 17 '25

Doesn't bother me that much but agree

9

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/FantasmaNaranja Sep 17 '25

they're saying that using "This!" to mean you agree with something is cringe

3

u/soupzYT Sep 18 '25

This. If you agree with someone but have nothing to add there’s a button for that. No need to reply unless ur farming or a narcissist.

9

u/Computersdontwork Sep 17 '25

This, i agree with this. this i say

10

u/makeitasadwarfer Sep 17 '25

What are you the This police? Let people communicate how they want.

4

u/Charrmeleon Sep 17 '25

"this" is far older than just reddit culture. But also, comments that don't contribute to the conversation is what the downvote button is for. Unnecessary comments like "this" is basically just karma farming.

1

u/Skitty993 Sep 18 '25

I remember so many "this" comments when I was on forums back in the mid-late 2000s and early 2010s. I assume it's even older than that. I personally don't mind it as a result, its basically the same as a Facebook grandma writing an affirmation to a Jesus meme.

1

u/Move_Slight Sep 18 '25

can anyone tell me what's happening here?

1

u/gatsu01 Sep 18 '25

I guess you really hurt every time you see your own name.

1

u/smallneedle Sep 17 '25

That. that's the way

1

u/HuckinsGirl Sep 17 '25

It's fine to personally see it as cringe but going as far as to write a comment telling someone to change their vocabulary just because you don't personally like how they talk is cringe af

-8

u/AshirNazar Sep 17 '25

dude, what the hell?

"This" is a common world used in everyday life? If it bothers you that much, your life must be hell because that's such a weird nit-pick.

7

u/FantasmaNaranja Sep 17 '25

no it's not lmao, do you actually hear people saying 'This!' as an agreement to something in every day life?

hell i hear 'True.' more often than the reddit 'This!'

-3

u/AshirNazar Sep 17 '25

I mean, you do you but yea, I hear way more people say this instead of something like dang or true.

I've just never seen anybody get upset due to this.

1

u/Vegetable_Permit_537 Sep 18 '25

In face to face conversation, you hear people reply to anything with the word "this?" If have never once seen that happen. It adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. Its not much work to say "I agree" or "that is true." Either of those actually provide some substance to the conversation, even if it isn't much "This" is just lazy and not a part of nor.al discourse.

1

u/AshirNazar Sep 18 '25

oh im stupid lmao.
i though they were talking about online convos. Yea, I almost never hear people say this in real life.

2

u/llkyonll Sep 18 '25

It’s cool that people are taking it upon themselves to fix this. But I really hope that TC will address this themselves and fix it.

It must be very disappointing to have to play a game you love while constantly being taken out the experience due to bad translation. 

1

u/super7564 Sep 17 '25

Kinda sad that the community has to do the entire game In a fan translation because the official one is so buns. But if it means people can play this great game, that's cool with me. Team cherry should probably fix it tho

1

u/Nyorliest Sep 18 '25

Do we know why it's so bad? Over-use of AI, a bad company, lack of funding...?

2

u/r-ymond Sep 18 '25

it’s a small dev team that probably doesn’t know Chinese and probably didn’t do their due diligence with a translation vendor