When were those days again?

I whined about the FF7 localization for years. Eventually met one of the guys in charge for separate reasons and whined at him about it. We were both quite old by then.

Some local games media in the late 90s and early 2000s here had a policy that no localization or bad localization would knock 1 to 2 points off the review score automatically, regardless of how good or bad the rest of the game was.

The headline is either confusing or a touch clickbaity. It’s mixed for Chinese language reviews specifically. The overall (and the English reviews, too) are at Very Positive.

But hey, fair, they messed up with the localization and apparently some bits of the launch. It’s gonna get you on the user reviews.

I was mainly thinking of the NES days. “I feel asleep!” “I am Error.” “Someone set up us the bomb.” “A winner is you!”

Well, you do need to hire someone, get them set up with access to the text database and then you need to implement the updated lines in-game and test and then bug fix anything that breaks anything, presumably. And then make the patch, submit it and have it go live, although for China presumably that’d be Steam-specific and have no actual first party approval process?

The main complaint seems to be that it is translated like a wuxia novel, which is incorrectly stated to be against the tone of the game.

Wuxia describes very near exactly the tone of Hollow Knight games: a lone, chivalrous but low-born warrior wandering the land fighting their way through a mythical world of bad guys, following legends and righting wrongs while journeying toward the ultimate prize/destination.

Coupled with zero examples of “bad translations”, I’d take this article with a shaker of salt.

I mean even in english the text is cryptic af. Maybe they’re upset it’s intentionally hard to understand

As a translator, I wanna say that translation isn’t a simple conversion of words when it comes to story. It takes longer than that to translate a good story of 50 pages because you have to make sure you understand the story and even the unwritten parts of it to convey the right nuance and tone.

My father used to translate books and managed about a page per hour with an editor to offer notes. I stand by 2-3 weeks to manually translate 50 pages of dialogue and exposition to a great, shippable quality. It’s more difficult when the subject matter is this disjointed, but I don’t imagine it would slow someone down by more than 4x. Particularly if there are notes on tone and premise available.

Maybe you were just talking about the story and perhaps you’re right. A whole team might be able to handle it with perfect editor’s notes and zero questions, zero changes.

But I would like to also add that Hollow Knight’s story is very cryptic and the lines by all the characters are very disjointed. It’s also a fantasy so there are a lot of made up names, terminologies, ideas, and play on words that simply may not exist in the target language.

I don’t know what genre or language pairs your father used to translate, but English to Chinese, I imagine, is quite difficult.

I read an article about the Japanese localization of the game and the translator did a lot of back and forth with the devs (not just an editor), to discuss the world and tone. It wasn’t just a matter of “we want it this way by this day,” and boom, it’s done.

Furthermore, you have to consider all the extra UI stuff they have to translate when it comes to video games.

So, while I respect your opinion, I too stand by mine that 2 - 3 weeks seems too short especially if we include the UI stuff as well as review/QA.

It could be that your father was just better than me at translating lol.

Edit: I’m also wondering if the PPC needs to review the content (not the quality) before it is approved for sale in China.

One of the characters says „and btw Taiwan is a sovereign nation“

don’t speak a language

have no idea yourself how the end product will turn out

every person you hire has to be trusted with a grain of salt and you have to take them at their word

Nightmare, but now that the game is out, it isn’t like the content is under Fort Knox anymore and they can peer review it with the community until its right.

From the Kotaku article linked by PCGamer:

According to localization expert Loek van Kooten, one of the main issues is that Silksong‘s evocative but concise writing has been turned into “a high-school drama club’s Elizabethan improv night” in the Chinese versions. He cites the following as an example of how the prose reads:

With nary a spirit nor thought shalt thou persist, bereft of mortal will, unbent, unswayed. With no lament nor tearful cry, only sorrow’s dirge to herald thine eternal woe. Born of gods and of the fathomless abyss, grasping heaven’s firmament in thine unworthy palm. Shackled to endless dream, tormented by pestilence and shadow, thy heart besieged by phantasmal demons. Thou art the chalice of destiny. Verily, thou art the Primordial Knight of Hollowness.

Van Kooten goes on to point out that one of two of Silksong‘s Chinese translators, listed as Hertzz Liu in the credits, had a habit of gloating about their involvement in the game and leaking small details about the development process over the summer prior to its release this week.

I took a quick look at the English dialogue and it reads nothing like the example above. If the Chinese translation is really like that, then the tone is indeed quite different.

Kotaku also quotes the following from a Steam review:

First, the god-awful Chinese translation that everyone is mocking. It’s not just pretentious, pseudo-artistic nonsense—the phrasing and even the localization of place names are an absolute mess. I don’t understand how Hollow Knight’s fantastic, quotable translation turned into this unsalvageable heap of garbage in Silksong. The utterly idiotic localization has even affected the game’s world-building and storytelling, forcing me to guess at character relationships and main plot points. Thankfully, the combat holds up, or else I’d be completely disgusted.

While I can’t verify it myself, considering the state of JP→EN translation I don’t find any of this unbelievable. The complaints line up in what I see in English releases of Japanese games: Misplaced anachronistic language, altered world building, characters and major plot points changed sometimes dramatically (or even cut completely), not to mention unprofessional conduct by the translation team.

Did we?

So this itsy tiny company, called CD Project. You know what they started as? Locolisation for the Polish market because there was no standards. That’s their claim to fame before ever starting on a game themselves.

Your comment has to be an anecdotal. Because games lived and died by localisations. Game like Gothic is legendary in Europe but the English version was quite lack luster and even though the games were vastly superior to elder scrolls, they couldn’t penetrate.

You know how bad things are when I searched for some examples and the first result is a localization mod.

That is very close to the English text of both the original Hollow Knight and Silksong.

Opening game description:

"They see your beauty, so frail and fine,

They see your peace, woven of faith and toil,

They forget your heart, bound in slumber and servitude,

When you wake they shall see your truth"

Dialogue

“May you ease your shell within, that your strength renewed can carry you higher.”

“this is the final bell, it shall be rang the last time ever.”

“Scoundrel! Fiend! Who dares wake brave Garmond from his well needed kip?”

“Hold there sister! A great beast stalks this land, swooping and screeching like an ill mannered tyrant!”

The HK games deliberately exist and speak in dramatic and archaic language in a world with knights, citadels, legends and lords.

All your reviews are belong to us. You have no chance to positive. Make your time.

Wait did they include the mewtwo quote from the first Pokémon movie in hollow knight??

Thank you, I thought that one sounded familiar! Let me take it out until I can confirm.

I can confirm Garmond’s exclamations.

That is very close to the English text of both the original Hollow Knight and Silksong.

I disagree. If the original is a 3 or 4 on the dramatic and archaic language scale then the translation is a 8+ which definitely changes the tone. Compare the lines you posted with the retranslated quote.

Let me give you the example from my previous comment in its original context:

Global reviews praised Silksong into the stratosphere, with a glowing 92% positivity. In China, however, the numbers plummeted almost immediately to 76% 52%. And the reason could not be hidden: it was the localization. Complaints date back to the August demo, when awkward word choices like 苔穴 (‘moss-hole’) raised eyebrows. Despite repeated feedback, the translation team brushed off criticism—changing their social media bios to ‘don’t comment if you don’t understand.’ That defiance only inflamed players further. What players found on screen was not the brisk, lyrical, elegant style that had carried the first Hollow Knight to such acclaim, but a swamp of overwrought archaisms, a self-indulgent carnival of tangled phrasing that felt less like modern Chinese and more like a Qing-dynasty soap opera written by someone pretending to be Shakespeare.

To illustrate the calamity, one need only place the original Hollow Knight’s translation beside Silksong’s.

The original:

No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry out in suffering. Born of God and Void. You are the Vessel. You are the Hollow Knight.

Concise. Clean. Haunting.

Now behold the Silksong version, which players were forced to endure — rendered here in English as the grotesque monstrosity it resembled:

With nary a spirit nor thought shalt thou persist, bereft of mortal will, unbent, unswayed. With no lament nor tearful cry, only sorrow’s dirge to herald thine eternal woe. Born of gods and of the fathomless abyss, grasping heaven’s firmament in thine unworthy palm. Shackled to endless dream, tormented by pestilence and shadow, thy heart besieged by phantasmal demons. Thou art the chalice of destiny. Verily, thou art the Primordial Knight of Hollowness.

One can imagine the reaction. Players did not feel immersed in Pharloom; they felt trapped in a high-school drama club’s Elizabethan improv night. Instead of fighting for survival, they were decoding riddles with the cadence of a failed King James Bible. It is impossible to perform platforming precision when the screen itself sounds like a plague sermon.

And another example, also with English retranslation: Image

Edit: I should note just in case, that the image above is a parody: this is what some Chinese players feel the new team would have localized the lines above from the first game.

I don’t see how that delivers the “equivalent experience” that a faithful localization is meant to provide to the target language reader.