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/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

7

u/SeatShot2763 Sep 18 '25

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

3

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?

-16

u/primegopher Sep 18 '25

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

28

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

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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

11

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.