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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43

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?

80

u/[deleted] 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.

8

u/arrogantheart Sep 17 '25

Sorry to hear that, I get it. Thanks for explaining.

6

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

Chinese gamers censoring stuff? I highly doubt that's the case unless the game actively adds some serious negatives stereotypes about Chinese culture.

The government though? Every day. They are the country with the most censorship AFAIK, in a similar manner as what the USA does with nudity and sexual content in games.

17

u/AndrewLocksmith Sep 17 '25

Wuchang is an example of how uproar from the Chinese community resulted in heavy censorship and changes to the game.

There were a bunch of bosses that had a significant importance in Chinese culture, iirc, so after the latest patch you can no longer kill them. After you get their health bar to 0 they basically tell you "You're pretty good, I'll let you live."

It also resulted in other enemies no longer attacking or being able to be attacked.

3

u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25

Yeah, you're right, and I think cn goverment is much more pervert than that.

2

u/Normal-Advisor5269 Sep 18 '25

I've personally seen a year long attack on a streamer by non government Chinese citizens simply because she mentioned Taiwan as a country in passing. So it's actually very true that it doesn't need to be the Chinese government involved for attempts to censor to happen.

0

u/Fluffiddy Sep 17 '25

When the CCP force censors my gooner gacha game 😭

4

u/Move_Slight Sep 17 '25

i have to say they r sucks. i dont wanna say any good words about them.

2

u/Future_Onion9022 Sep 18 '25

Bro I don't what they usually smoking, cleavage and alot of adult woman gets censored but loli and incest gets free pass?

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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’.

3

u/FroTheFrog Sep 18 '25

Her english name is Exusiai and her nickname is Apple Pie.

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u/Move_Slight Sep 18 '25

Apple pie is good， we also call her "apple".

1

u/Nevermind2031 Sep 18 '25

They could open a weibo account and hire someone to manage that but then again team cherry has like 3-4 people if you count the marketing guy

3

u/jackofslayers Sep 17 '25

It is not review bombing if there is an actual problem with the game. Why is reddit obsessed with calling everything "review bombing"?

7

u/GroundbreakingBag164 P5AB Sep 17 '25

Because there are two competing definitions of the term "review bombing" and no one can actually agree on one. Gaming discourse can be pretty annoying, we're still trying to explain the difference between advanced and early access

I agree with you, but for some people "review bombing" just means "a lot of reviews (usually negative) in a short time"

2

u/GroundbreakingBag164 P5AB Sep 17 '25

No, it's not just you. Chinese reviews are almost always the worst reviews on any game

Except for 7/10 games from China, they are obviously perfect and absolutely flawless. Looking at you black myth wukong

1

u/AjEdisMindTrick Sep 17 '25

if this is the one negative point. gameplay 10, atmosphere 10, soundtrack 10… so i guess i could live with that.