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.

In this one case, it kinda sucks for the devs since they presumably had no way of knowing they were releasing a flawed product. It was probably the translator that fucked them over.

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.

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.

I have played plenty of other games where characters speak in a classical style. Unless it’s being done to mark the characters as old fashioned (or the world is literally set in medieval times) then it comes off as extremely pretentious.

Edit: I know Hollow Knight is sacred in the indie game community. I’m just saying this is something that annoys many people (including me) who prefer verisimilitude and authenticity.

Thats the thing, that IS the atmosphere the game goes for, you do not know about what you are talking about.

Don’t sell to markets you don’t understand. I don’t feel sorry for them, even as a big Hollow Knight fan.