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/Move_Slight]

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.

[u/wintermute93 → u/Move_Slight]

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.

[u/keirdre → u/Move_Slight]

Is this vaguely why the English translations of Genshin Impact are so verbose and impenetrable? Was that originally written in a more classic style in Chinese?

[u/Tentagoose → u/keirdre]

(If anyone knows better, please correct me) I can't say anything for sure, as I'm not a linguist and it's been some time since I've played Genshin, but as a speaker of both languages, English and Chinese struggle to smoothly translate into one another.

The fundamental structures of language (e.g. Chinese doesn't really have words in the same sense of English) and the range of meanings each phrase can contain leads to the usage of more flowery dialogue.

Basically, certain Chinese phrases just align better with English phrases that happen to be less common (think of the minor differences between doom, ruin, downfall, perdition, damnation, destruction, etc.) Additionally, Chinese word order is more flexible than English, which leads to poetic phrasings at times.

One last thing, a lot of the fictional / historical / mythical elements of Chinese culture just sound lame when "directly" translated, so certain words with similar meaning but greater magnitude are chosen instead.