Hollow Knight: Silksong sinks to 'Mixed' Steam review status among Chinese gamers over its bafflingly bad translation, with Team Cherry promising to improve it
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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.
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Thats the thing, that IS the atmosphere the game goes for, you do not know about what you are talking about.
The game is deliberately pretentious? Okay. Then the negative reviews are justified.
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Don’t sell to markets you don’t understand. I don’t feel sorry for them, even as a big Hollow Knight fan.
I don’t even understand how that logic is supposed to work. Fuck every localisation attempt, then? 99% of games will be English only?
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I mean yes and no. The translator is supposed to make sure the text conveys the same meaning/intent. That doesn’t mean things are 1:1.
With cryptic and poetic text as seen in these games you certainly can’t just Google translate it.
the lines in hollow knight/silksong feel empty so adding a bit “more” isn’t too bad.
translator is supposed to make sure the text conveys the same meaning/intent
Those are not the same thing.
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The game is deliberately pretentious? Okay. Then the negative reviews are justified.
The people talk like characters from a Shakespeare play, youre just virtue signaling
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The people talk like characters from a Shakespeare play, youre just virtue signaling
Believe me, no one gives a damn about a critic.
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One of the characters says „and btw Taiwan is a sovereign nation“
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Update: Hollow Knight: Silksong sinks to 'Mostly Negative' Steam review status among Chinese gamers over its bafflingly bad translation, with Team Cherry promising to improve it
The extent of the issues makes it sound like a tall order.
PC Gamer (www.pcgamer.com)
I thought stream updated policies so that this time of foreign review bombing wouldn’t be as apparent? (Reviews in your specific region counting)
Edit: they did. Still is very positive for everyone else
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I thought stream updated policies so that this time of foreign review bombing wouldn’t be as apparent? (Reviews in your specific region counting)
Edit: they did. Still is very positive for everyone else
I actually don’t know if it’s Steam or Enhanced Steam but there’s a way to filter reviews by language. It’s really neat to see something like overwhelmingly positive in one country, and mixed/negative in another country.
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This post did not contain any content.
Update: Hollow Knight: Silksong sinks to 'Mostly Negative' Steam review status among Chinese gamers over its bafflingly bad translation, with Team Cherry promising to improve it
The extent of the issues makes it sound like a tall order.
PC Gamer (www.pcgamer.com)
Things feeling overly flowery. Wuxia-style or even nonsensical, clearly show that tone matters as much as accuracy in localization. Let’s hope the upcoming fixes restore the game’s intended mood and readability for all players.
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From what I’ve heard, Chinese gamers are significantly more likely to leave a negative review if there are issues. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I think it’s good for consumers to demand the products they buy to be as good as possible, but it also just makes developers want to avoid them, or do things like Steam has and separate reviews by language by default.
We got jabronis who leave bad reviews because games are woke.
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I actually don’t know if it’s Steam or Enhanced Steam but there’s a way to filter reviews by language. It’s really neat to see something like overwhelmingly positive in one country, and mixed/negative in another country.
Oh that’s was a default steam change (for the better)
Got tired of seeing random Chinese bullshit review bombing because a non-foreign specific game didn’t give enough glory to the CCP and china to appease nationalists
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I thought stream updated policies so that this time of foreign review bombing wouldn’t be as apparent? (Reviews in your specific region counting)
Edit: they did. Still is very positive for everyone else
If they have a legitimate complaint (bad translation), it’s not review bombing
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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.
It’s insane, here’s the translation back to English:
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.
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Though it’s not really relevant to anyone not speaking that language, even if it’s not review bombing.
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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.
I think translations should involve a pair of people where both know both languages but one is fluent in the one while the other is fluent in the other. Or a single person fluent in both, but if you don’t know the other language, it can be hard to verify that fluency and I’m sure it’s not very hard to find people willing to lie about their proficiency to get a job.
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Devotion is a great game!
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HK games are not set in China, but they are both firmly set in a medieval fantasy world
??!
I guess we have completely different ideas of the word medieval. This to me looks like a completely separate, unique fantasy world with no resemblance whatsoever to a historical medieval setting of the sort that games like D&D are based on.
It’s fine if they have created this wonderful unique setting of their own, but then it leaves me with the question of how the language aspects of medieval society ended up there despite all the other differences. I mean these characters don’t even resemble humans!
Faerun literally has a plane of existence that is a cube. Don’t be obtuse. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Acheron
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A game having a bad translation in your language is a valid concern, and not “stupid shit”.
The dislike for the translation appears to be more a bunch of idiot not liking wuxia style speech.
This would be like English speakers review bombing silksong over it’s Shakespearean style of speech.
The translation is fine and accurate to the source.
Calling it a bad translation is just objectively not true. At worse you could make an argument that it’s too accurate and over steps instead of taking into consideration the gap between wuxia and modern Chinese versus Shakespearean and modern English
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Yep, this is caused because people flood in from their little discord server where everyone has crawled up the dev’s ass. Once you learn to recognize this you’ll never be able to unsee it.
This makes sense. I never went with the whole discord thing, so I didn’t think of that possibility.
I have no idea why one would ever use that platform as a forum of sorts. To me it was always a bloated alternative to ventrilo or TeamSpeak.
