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Blizzard, please give Chinese people better translations

The new patch came out today and we are all hyped. But the Chinese (Simplified) translation is really a pain in the ass.

I wasn't totally caught off-guard by these poor translations, since the translators made similar mistakes over and over, but it still itches each time I look at these translations.

The Chinese translators have done the followings in the past:

  • Forget to put a "Choose One" in the card text (fixed)

  • Messed up the wordings on Rat Pack's text that don't even make sense in Chinese grammar (fixed an expansion later)

  • Pronounced the K in Knuckles so gave him a wrong name (fixed an expansion later)

  • Translated the 3 hogs (Tanaris Hogchopper, Spiked Hogrider, Leatherclad Hogleader) wrong, by mistaking the adj as their names. The translations would read: Spiked the Hogrider, .etc. It's really hilarious and not yet fixed today.

  • Messing up Whenever and After.

  • other grammar mistakes in Chinese.

And now, in the new patch they've got the card Doomerang's translation all wrong. The Chinese version is:

对一个随从投掷你的武器,对该随从造成等同于该武器攻击力的伤害,随后该武器返回你的手牌。

In English the translation would read as:

... (the spell) deal damage equals to your weapon's attack, ...

Exactly the same as in Shadowflame. So everyone thought the damage is dealt by the spell and will not trigger poisonous, lifesteal, .etc. But in English it is pretty clear that it's the weapon(as "it" in the English card text) which deals damage.

And beside this obvious mistake, there's a lot of grammar mistakes in this set, too many that I even lost count. For example, in Bonemare:

战吼:使一个友方随从获得+4/+4并具有嘲讽。

It reads: give a friendly minion +4/+4 and have taunt.

Like, what's the sudden change of subject? Can't you just say give a friendly minion +4/+4 and (give it) taunt?

I'm a native Chinese speaker so I can make sure that such usage is incorrect in Chinese. And similar things happens all over, like in 20 cards. The whole expansions contains only 135 cards. It's like they didn't bother to read their own translation to find out the mistakes. Or are they even native?

Hearthstone is a great game, but it's Chinese version is greatly flawed, damaging the rule's clarity as well as the game's quality as a whole. And it's no doubt a scratch on Hearthstone's name, as some people on Chinese forums are using these mistakes to prove that Hearthstone's rules are inconsistent(more than it is so) and unclear.

Please, Blizzard. Hearthstone is played by people throughout the world, and every region deserves your attention. It hurts me to see that my countrymen are troubled by the translations and their experiences made worse by it. It would be great for Chinese people as well as hearthstone itself if you make it's Chinese translation better.

By the way, yes it is a Blizzard thing, not Netease's. In China, Blizzard China provides the contents, and Netease runs the market.

Woah that's a wall of words I just typed up. Thank you all for hearing me out!


Edit: Some other mistakes they made are listed below. Some found these interesting so I'll put it here. Do enjoy, and you might feel our pain as well.

  • One of the most infamous one is Rat Pack's text. The Chinese read as: Deathrattle: summon a number of 1/1s, the number being the amount of damage this minion's attack can deal (其数量等于攻击力所能造成的伤害). Literally. We had a hard time figuring out it actually just means the minion's attack.

  • They've translated Grim Patron as Terrible Slavedriver, as someone stated above. So Patron Warrior was called Slave Warrior in Chinese. Hilarious.

  • In the new set, they translated some freezing mechanics correctly, but some others are translated as Let it be frozen (instead of simply saying Freeze it). Suddenly going old-fashioned.

  • They made several mistakes regarding pronouns. Mistaking this and that in Chinese. For example, cards like spreading plague's Chinese text reads as "...if your opponent has more minions, cast that again." And nobody knows what's "that" referring to.

  • Also, Archbishop's text reads as: Copy your opponent's deck. Shuffle this into your deck. Thanks god the sites used unofficial translation when revealing, so no one misunderstood this card's effect.

  • They translated Gang up as "strike at the night". Don't know if it's intended, but to me it's ridiculous. Sometimes I doubt that when they don't understand what the words meant at all, they just write something that matches the art.

  • They translated I Know A Guy as "Cocky (or taunty, something like that)". The flavor's totally messed up.

  • They translated Adapt as the exact words as the shaman card Evolve, and have to change Evolve's translation. What's worse, a lot of people are already calling "transform to 1 cost higher" effect "evolve", so they caused a HUGE misunderstanding when un'goro was out.

I can go on this all day... I'm literally laughing when typing these.


  • Ben Brode

    Posted 8 years, 5 months ago (Source)

    Thanks for the feedback on the specific translations. I'll pass them along!

  • Ben Brode

    Posted 8 years, 5 months ago (Source)

    As another native Chinese speaker, I have to say that NOT all of the translations are bad. In fact, some are genius. For example, Leeroy Jenkins was a meme of himself. To have a literal name translation would make this card forgetable as 里落依 贞肯斯 would be "too much of a mouthful of a long, Western name", but "火车王", literally King of Trains, is highly memorable, and it implies the card's action (that it just charges in).

    Another one would be "琥口脱险" (Free from Amber), as it is a play-on word of 虎口脱险,a Chinese idiom meaning escaping from the tiger's mouth, with 虎, promounced as "hǔ", meaning tiger. 琥珀 mean amber, which the first character is pronounced the same, so this translation is actually a GENIUS. I was impressed on how some of the translations are done, where the Traditional translations done in Taiwan are inferior to the ones done in the mainland.

    Ben Brode, while accurate translations are extremely important, I hope a "hey, you guys' translations suck" will scare them from making COOL translations in the future and everything. Please continue to encourage COOL translations as well.

    I totally agree that we've had successes with localization, too. The people doing this stuff are highly passionate and love the game. We're always excited to find opportunities to improve, let's keep making it better!




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