The Most Common Errors in Chinese to English Game Localization

In the worlds of translation and localization, every language pair will bring its own set of unique challenges. I primarily work with the Chinese to English pair, so I thought I would share the most common problems I see when it comes to CN to EN game localization.

The core challenge of the Chinese English language pair:

Chinese has a high level of lexical density. This means that a lot of information can be conveyed with just a few characters. This often leads to issues in text length and truncation in the UI.

To make this problem worse, most Chinese games are developed with a “China first” mentality. This means that most games are not made with foreign languages or internationalization practices in mind. This can result in major issues where it is almost impossible to make translations fit because the original design didn’t take any other languages into consideration.

Most analyses covering text expansion claim that typical Chinese to English translations expand around 20-30% in length. In my experience, however, it is closer to 50%, with the most dramatic text expansion seen in user interface and skill descriptions.

Grammar Issues

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Run on sentences

This has less to do with strict “translator error” and more to do with how Chinese works. In Chinese, the sentence-ending period 。 is used more sparingly than in English. Chinese writers commonly chain multiple clauses together using the enumeration comma 、, the regular comma ，, or no punctuation at all.

Even seasoned translators commit this error because when mirroring the Chinese structure, the resulting English sentences can just keep going and going and going. The example I provide below is a relatively light one—some of these run-on sentences can form a block of text equal to a paragraph in length.

敌方英雄已被消灭，你的队伍取得了胜利，战斗结束后将结算你的积分。
❌ The enemy hero has been eliminated your team has achieved victory your score will be calculated after the battle ends.
✅ Enemy hero eliminated. Victory! Your score will be tallied once the battle ends.

Overusing passive voice

任务已完成，奖励已发放。
❌ The quest has been completed. The rewards have been distributed.
✅ Quest complete. Rewards sent!

道具已被成功使用，效果将持续30分钟。
❌ The item has been successfully used, the effect will be maintained for a duration of 30 minutes.
✅ Item used! Effect lasts 30 minutes.

Redundant or Lengthy Translations

确认+ verb + object is a common pattern in Chinese.
Confirm to combine materials? Confirm to leave the battle?
In many cases “Combine materials?” or “Leave the battle? are enough.

Defeat a total of 10 players in a duel.
Defeat 10 players in a duel.

Successfully exchanged! The pack has been mailed to you.
”Success! Pack sent to your mailbox."
"Success! Check your mail.”

False Cognates and Genre False Friends

Terms like 副本 (dungeon/instance, not “copy”), 装备 (gear/equipment, not just “equipment”), and 技能 (skill/ability, not “technique”) get mistranslated by translators who don’t know the genre conventions. Even experienced translators can make these mistakes if they haven’t translated games before.

Countable / Uncountable Nouns

Deer: Deers Gold: Golds Gear: Gears Furniture: Furnitures English is weird, so you can’t fault newbie translators for this. Recognizing these types of nouns just takes more time and exposure to the language.

Honorifics and Terms of Address

Chinese uses titles like 大人, 前辈, 殿下 constantly in RPGs. These get left in pinyin (Daren, Qianbei) or translated awkwardly (“Adult,” “Senior”). There’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution, which is exactly why it deserves a style guide or termbase entry.

Inconsistent Name Romanization

The same character name might appear as both “Xiao Zhan” and “Xiaozhan” within the same game due to no established standard.

Typography & Encoding

【 】 ！？；，：（ ）……

Punctuation

Chinese punctuation is full width because it’s designed to take up the same amount of space as a Chinese character. When Chinese punctuation is used next to English language, the spacing and proportions just look “off”. Furthermore, punctuation issues can be hard to spot during a visual QA scan because many of these marks look similar to the Latin-based punctuation used in English.

Fonts

If a translator is using fonts like MS Yahei (微软雅黑) or SimSun (宋体), they may be typing Latin characters but the punctuation marks will remain full width. This is because these Asian fonts do indeed include Latin glyphs so that a document mixing Chinese and English can render without falling back to a substitute font.

Half-width ! is U+0021. Full-width ！is U+FF01. Though they happen to look similar, these are completely different characters. Font choice can determine which character is used by default, but the character itself is baked into the file. This means that even if a game engine uses Arial or another Latin font for rendering, the full-width character remains in the data. Now it just renders incorrectly because a Latin font has no full-width glyph equivalent, so it either substitutes or stretches it awkwardly.

Usage Issues

1. 操作: Operate

The translation of this word can vary depending on context, but usually it should be “Use” or “Controls”

2. 对应: Corresponding

Also depends on context. Usually “Matching” or “Associated” are more appropriate. In many cases, this word can be dropped from translations entirely because the player understands the relation due to context.

(Example: Finish all daily and weekly quests to get corresponding rewards.”)

3. 界面: Interface

Interface is a technical term. Usually this can be translated to “screen” or “menu”.

4. 福利: Welfare

This translation is very awkward to Americans. When an American sees the word “welfare”, they typically think about the government giving benefits to those in need.

5. 消耗: Consume

I’ve had some conflicts with devs about this one. Sometimes the devs really want to emphasize that the item or resource will be used in its entirety and not returned or kept. However, in most cases, translating this as “Use” or “Spend” is fine. The vast majority of players understand that if they’re using or spending a currency or resource and that they won’t be getting it back.

6. 累计: Accumulatively

Accumulatively get 10 likes 累计被他人点赞10次 累计击杀3只野怪
In these cases, 累计can be omitted. Get 10 likes. Kill 3 monsters.

Whew! That’s it for now! It’s even likely that I committed some of the very same errors in making this post. That’s how tricky they are to spot. If you’re translating Chinese to English or the other way around—I hope this helps!