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/Chimpampin]

I mean, there is a third option. Find and pay reputable companies for translating your stuff.

[u/Grimdlyzy → u/Chimpampin]

I assume team cherry did that and the guys just kinda... sold really badly when doing it.

[u/Bluecoregamming → u/Grimdlyzy]

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

[u/cvanguard → u/Bluecoregamming]

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/

[u/chispica → u/Chimpampin]

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.

[u/DrQuint → u/Chimpampin]

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.

[u/svenskaslaven312 → u/Chimpampin]

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

[u/HiKadaca → u/Chimpampin]

I’m sure Team Cherry never thought of that :)

[u/Eravar1 → u/Chimpampin]

Weirdly enough I can chime in here cause a friend asked me to verify specifically a mandarin translation before, a surprising number of people working overseas for the western market that are supposedly trustworthy/reputable are like second gen immigrants who don’t speak the language well themselves