It’s great to hear from a trusted authority that the translation is perfect. I’m sure the Chinese will be happy to hear that their concerns are baseless

“…completely different ideas of the word medieval.”

That is likely due to our staggered familiarity with the games, which you haven’t played. Your screenshot is from one of the areas outside the collapsed castles and cities, without any narration or dialogue, and is consequently non-representative of the setting and atmosphere.

Bearing in mind that medieval only refers to one aspect of the setting mentioned above, it’s an accurate descriptor for Hollow Knight and Silksong: Medieval refers to the time after the bygone era of royal society, fallen castles and a decimated population left behind after the apparent invasion and collapse. Even in your screenshot early on in the game, you can see evidence of some higher society collapsed by that gilded metal.

The Hollow Knight games are all about a wandering knight/warrior returning long after the collapse, working their way up to a central castle structure, “The Citadel”. What used to be a thriving world and society with centralized authority has been reduced to destroyed cities and towns, abandoned, shadowy brick and mortar rooms and roads, some shuttered churches and scattered huts lit by candles. Evidence of grander past societal achievements are the physical setting of the game in the forms of great broken bridges, mechanical mechanisms that few are capable of operating or maintaining, and importantly to this thread, “the language aspects of medieval society” can be seen throughout all game text as anachronistic linguistic references to a bygone higher world, both structurally and socially.

“the characters don’t even resemble humans!”

They are not humans, they are bugs, which is where the “fantasy” descriptor comes into play.

If you like video games, you should give HK or Silksong a whirl. They are great games and a lot of what I have had a very fun time describing will be both apparent and described in-game after you’ve spent time in their world.

I’m not sure what that screenshot is supposed to be directly comparing, you’ll have to ask that commenter.

The difference in the Chinese characters and words themselves is that the Silksong words are more complex, like using “无”(without) rather than the simple negative “no”, even “台”(platform) has a dozen different meanings depending on the context. The HK characters more concretely refer to single or limited actions and objects, while the Silksong characters are more complex and dynamically significant, depending on a lot of context to discern any specificity.

If all of Silksong is translated like that, it indicates the Chinese translators have focused on translating the overall shadowy, legendary, poetic atmosphere of the game throughout the descriptions and dialogue linguistically, which is contrary to the brief, down-to-earth descriptions and dialogue of much of the English source text. It seems like an artistic choice by the translators, but apparently not one that is resonating with some of the Chinese-speaking audience.

the so called “artistic choice” by the translators clearly diverges from the original writer’s artistic choices in a way that audiences perceive it as negative

This will be fixed in a week or two, but 80% of the reviews will not change. That’s just what review bombers do. Many buy the game to jump on the band wagon and refund the game. Review still counts.

Yes, it seems we do have different ideas of the word medieval. To me, medieval is not an abstract idea, it’s a specific period in European history. To be medieval a setting has to bear significant resemblance to that period.

This is not medieval. It’s very ornate but it bears no resemblance whatsoever to medieval art or architecture. If anything, it’s closer to Victorian than medieval. Everything I’ve seen in HK screenshots tells me it’s a fantasy pastiche of elements. It has no affinity with any particular period in human culture. Rather, it’s a cut-and-paste construction. (I hate the word appropriation because it implies theft. I do not want to imply that).

Like if a fantasy game is set on Mars with a bunch of green skinned Martians as characters then it’s not medieval even if the characters use Anglo-Saxon instead of English. It’s a pastiche of science fiction, fantasy, and medieval elements and it suffers from the same issue that a lot of bad Star Trek episodes had (see: planet of hats), which is verisimilitude:

Why did this society, which otherwise seems completely alien, just happen to evolve a conspicuous element that’s uncannily similar to an element in human history?

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

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.

This is one reason I’ve effectively stopped caring about steam review bombs. People review bomb over the stupidest shit and never change their review if the tiny issue is fixed

This is one reason I’ve effectively stopped caring about steam review bombs. People review bomb over the stupidest shit and never change their review if the tiny issue is fixed

This is one reason I’ve effectively stopped caring about steam review bombs. People review bomb over the stupidest shit and never change their review if the tiny issue is fixed

Probably excusable when neither one of the devs speak the language. They probably trusted whoever did the translation and that’s that. Seems like an easy fix though.

I am just curious how bad it could be that you would write a negative review about it. I’ve seen some pretty bad translations in my language, but it never made the game unplayable. I guess difficult to convey when you are not a Chinese speaker, the article examples don’t mean much to me.

Yeah, that’s a consequence of putting out a flawed product. Who cares?

I mean, it’s not 1:1, but for some of the lines I think I like the Chinese version better. Sometimes the lines in hollow knight/silksong feel empty so adding a bit “more” isn’t too bad.

A game having a bad translation in your language is a valid concern, and not “stupid shit”.

I’ve stopped caring about steam reviews completely. Too often I have bought a game that was reviewed as overwhelmingly positive and it turned out to be some boring ass niche game. At least I got them refunded.

Not a bug/won’t fix

Literally a bug

From people who have no translation in their own language, yes it is.

adding a bit “more” isn’t too bad.

That’s not the job of a bloody translator.