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Thread of the mistranslation of Kaeya’s English description calling him “exotic” and the bigger issue with genshin English translations in general
I’ve seen some people comment about this before but I wanted to talk about Kaeya’s description in CN and EN. In EN Kaeya is described as “exotic” which as we all know is a horrible and objectifying term to use on a POC.
But in CN he’s referred to as 异国的. 异 meaning “different”, 国 meaning “country” and 的 just turns the phrase into an adjective.
If you were to paste this into Google translate it would translate to “exotic” but the thing is google translate cannot pick up on the connotations between words and their cultural/historical background.
While as by definition “exotic” may just mean “foreign” but it’s a term that is strictly used on spices, animals, objects etc. When used on a person it’s very dehumanizing.
But 异国 in CN does not have that connotation, anyone who speaks CN can tell you that 异国 is just a more poetic way of saying “foreign”. I’ve seen CN people refer to Americans as 异国的 and it’s perfectly fine. If anything it just sounds a little too fancy.
But obviously if you were to translate that like “Americans are exotic” instead of “Americans are foreign” with no care for the connotations of the words in their respective languages then it sounds weird as hell.
When you say Kaeya is 异国的, the “异国” in question is Khaenriah, but you could also say he is in 异国他乡(in a country that’s foreign from his homeland) where in the 异国 is referring to Mondstadt instead.
In CN, referring to Kaeya as 异国的 is perfectly normal, there’s nothing eyebrow raising about it, he’s the only dark skinned character in a German based region- he looks like a foreigner.
In EN however calling him “exotic” just ties into centuries of POC fetishization, objectification and dehumanization. I think it really needs to be fixed.
This whole issue with Kaeya’s description also ties into another big issue with genshin eng translations in general-
This whole issue with Kaeya’s description also ties into another big issue with genshin eng translations in general-
a lot of it completely ignores the cultural background of the original CN text. The whole “sworn brothers” thing is a big and controversial one,
I’d argue that in CN the use of 义兄 to describe Kaeya and Diluc’s relationship was chosen specifically because it left leeway for interpretation as to whether or not they’re just sworn brothers or actual adoptive brothers.
One of the biggest things about storywriting is leaving opportunities for readers to make interpretations/headcanons so they can enjoy the characters in their own way, but “adopted sibling” in EN simply doesn’t have that freedom of interpretation.
There’s also other smaller things like Chongyun’s previous description saying he has excess “congenital positivity”, which makes absolutely no sense in EN.
They recently changed it to “excessive of yang energy” which is not only more faithful to the original meaning of 纯阳 but also much easier for EN speakers to understand because yin yang is a well known concept. That’s localization done right and that’s how it should have been.
But I would say that by far the character that has suffered the worst at the hands of poorly done localization is Zhongli. I could go off on essays about how zhongli was misportrayed in EN but I’ll try to keep it short.
Naturally as the character who’s most tied to CN culture, he’s also the biggest victim of bad translations. He’s the god of martial arts 武神, not the god of war战神. The god of war 战神 in genshin is Murata, the Pyro archon.
This one translation alone has caused so many people to project the image of a ruthless, violent and brutal western god of war onto him when in CN, that’s practically the opposite of what he is.
If you need a comparison: think of him as Athena, not Ares. That tied in with the fact that people tend to project western dragon lore onto him, despite the fact western and Chinese dragons could not be more different, paints a much more violent and cruel picture of his lore
Zhongli’s soft spoken and poetic speech pattern isn’t something that can be perfectly translated into EN and I think they did a good job generally, but they made it worse by having him use choice words in his descriptions of other characters,
like calling Childe “that rascal from Snezhnaya” when in CN he simply said “that warrior from Snezhnaya”. Even other characters descriptions of him are butchered (Venti calls him a “Brutish buffoon” in EN but in CN he says “rock head that doesn’t understand human emotion”).
That combined with the fact that the EN and CN voice actors for Zhongli portray him as practically 2 completely different characters really doesn’t help his case (Im begging all of y’all here to just listen to CN Zhongli once, eSPECIALLY the battle voice lines, and you’ll get it)
I’ll probably make a deep dive thread on Zhongli some other day but you guys get the point. Obviously it’s impossible to perfectly preserve the nuances of CN culture in EN text, so much is lost in translation,
like 天动万象 vs “I will have order”.... if I were to accurately translate what zhongli’s CN ult line actually means it would take me a full paragraph. But the least the translation team could do is /not/ embellish crap and make it worse.
Anyway I think genshin the EN translation team could do better. That’s it. If anyone wants to share info with me or correct me on anything please go ahead. I’m Chinese diaspora, have lived in CN for a few years and speak CN but I def dont know as much about CN culture as a native
Also a final note since some people seem to think I’m knit-picking: It’s not that much to ask for a company that makes millions in a month to do a better job at regulating their translations and avoiding offensive and/or misleading terms in their localizations
I made this thread just to shed some light on some of the more glaring issues I’ve seen with the EN translation of the game, it’s not to say the entire EN ver is horrible- just that it could be better
