Chinese players slam Hollow Knight: Silksong for inaccurate translation — testing of improved localization begins

Many Chinese players were unimpressed by the translation quality.

Players in China were particularly harsh on Hollow Knight: Silksong. Much of the backlash targeted the localization rather than the game itself.

The script contained excessive embellishments, and many lines diverged sharply from the original text.

A localization expert outlined how Silksong’s launch appeared to the Chinese community:

“What players saw on screen was not the brisk, lyrical, elegant tone that earned the original Hollow Knight its acclaim, but a mire of overloaded archaisms — a self-indulgent carnival of tangled phrases that resembled not contemporary Chinese but a Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) soap opera written by someone posing as Shakespeare.

In October, Team Cherry released beta patch 1.0.28954 for Hollow Knight: Silksong aimed at fixing a range of bugs and improving gamepad support and localizations.

The Simplified Chinese translation of Silksong has been reworked. The developers plan to refine it further based on tester feedback.

Source: iXBT.games