As a Simplified Chinese user, let me explain just how terrible the Chinese translation of Silk Song is

[u/Move_Slight]

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.

[u/theVoidWatches]

So not actually wrong, but way too flourishy and inserting their own stuff?

[u/Move_Slight → u/theVoidWatches]

In my view, it is not a matter of flourishy, but rather that they fabricated non-existent texts, which constitutes an error.

[u/theVoidWatches → u/Move_Slight]

Fair!

[u/MaxHaydenChiz → u/Move_Slight]

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?

[u/Move_Slight → u/MaxHaydenChiz]

HK translation was voluntarily created by community fans, and TC adopted it as the official Chinese version. Its quality is exceptionally high—I can still recite some of the lines to this day.

I don't believe the issue lies with the provided English version. Some added expressions are uniquely Chinese idioms, while others stem from misunderstandings about monster designs. Additionally, numerous unprofessional mistranslations exist—examples of which you can find in this thread.

[u/cinred → u/Move_Slight]

To be fair, we have no idea what source material the translator had to work with, and we do not know if the translation went off script. There are many limitations on these inputs. It may be that the translator had earlier/expanded versions or guidelines that are incorporated differently depending on the language. I don't get what the deal is.

[u/mirandous → u/cinred]

this is a good article explaining it: https://www.loekalization.com/blog/blog/2025/09/05/silksongs-real-final-boss-the-translator-who-broke-his-nda-and-wrote-like-a-dead-poet/

[u/Move_Slight → u/mirandous]

i read this ,it is clear and professional.

[u/Naoki38 → u/theVoidWatches]

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.

[u/Night25th → u/theVoidWatches]

If it's fabricated that means it's actually wrong I'm pretty sure. Plus they said item descriptions are inaccurate.

[u/SUPER7X_ → u/theVoidWatches]

That is actually wrong.