Silksong reviews drop to mostly negative for Chinese players due to confusing translations

For most Hollow Knight: Silksong players, the combat is challenging and the boss fights are punishing. However, there's another layer of complexity for anyone playing the sequel in Simplified Chinese: the bizarre translations. On its Steam store page, Silksong currently sits at a "Mostly Positive" rating across reviews in all languages. Once you filter for the Simplified Chinese reviews, the Metroidvania-style game plummets to "Mostly Negative."

There are plenty of complaints about Silksong being too hard and not rewarding enough, but the translation issues are a common theme across the reviews for Simplified Chinese. In the reviews and comments, players compared the translations to a jarring mix of ancient and modern Chinese. Tiger Tang, who worked on the Simplified Chinese translation of an indie RPG called OMORI, posted on X that the "translation reads like a Wuxia novel instead of conveying the game’s tone," referencing the literary genre that features martial arts and is often set in ancient China.

The good news is that the team behind Silksong is aware of the translation issues, as indicated by Matthew Griffin, who handles the game's marketing and publishing. Griffin posted on X that the team is aware of "quality issues with the current Simplified Chinese translation" and that they are "working to improve the translation over the coming weeks." When looking at the original Hollow Knight, the reviews are overwhelmingly positive, even when looking at the Simplified Chinese reviews. However, Silksong credits a team of two for its Chinese localization, while the original featured six.