Chinese-speaking Silksong players are calling out the game’s lackluster translation, and Team Cherry has promised improvements

• Chinese-speaking Silksong players have expressed frustration with the game’s translation
• To some, it “reads like a Wuxia novel” instead of conveying the game’s themes
• Developer Team Cherry has promised improvements “over the coming weeks”

Reviews and reception for Hollow Knight: Silksong^[1] have been largely positive since its September 4 release, and despite some issues with its difficulty^[2], that hasn’t stopped well over half a million players checking out the game on Steam alone^[3].

That being said, Chinese-speaking players have been expressing dissatisfaction at Silksong’s Simplified Chinese translation. As reported by Eurogamer^[4], players have taken to social media to provide feedback on the translation, with one user stating^[5] it “reads like a Wuxia novel instead of conveying the game’s tone. This isn’t about effort, but about taste and direction, and speaking from experience likely can’t be fixed without replacing the translator.”

When filtering Steam reviews to those who played the game in Simplified Chinese, Silksong holds a ‘Mixed’ rating with only around 44% of those reviews being positive. Clearly there’s some work to be done.

To that end, marketing and publishing head for Silksong, Matthew Griffin, took to X / Twitter^[6] to respond to criticism from Chinese-speaking players.

“To our Chinese speaking fans,” Griffin wrote, “We appreciate you letting us know about quality issues with the current Simplified Chinese translation of Hollow Knight: Silksong. We’ll be working to improve the translation over the coming weeks. Thanks for your feedback and support.”

We currently don’t know when these improvements will take effect in the game, but hopefully, Chinese-speaking players won’t have to wait too long for a higher-quality translation.

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