PC Gaming

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.

Wait did they include the mewtwo quote from the first Pokémon movie in hollow knight??

I’ve never played either game but I’ll be honest: that English text looks really pretentious to me. I can imagine how bad things could get if that were carried over into the Chinese translation.

Everyday Chinese speech is very plain, blunt, and utilitarian. The Great Classical Chinese novels are anything but. They are as important (arguably even more so) to Chinese as Shakespeare is to English. Speaking in that style should come off just as pretentious in Chinese as a video game character speaking Shakespearean style would in English. Generally, in English fiction (especially TV shows), characters are brutally mocked for speaking in that style unless they are literally reading, rehearsing, or performing Shakespeare.