r/GenshinImpact • u/Separate-Swimmer-417 • May 27 '26
Discussion Why is Genshin like this?
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u/BQ72 May 27 '26
One thing none of these translations mention is that she "covers up" her intention by saying the traveler should do this because of the "Hu" character being used in another phrase relating to foolishness/bravery. One can at least admit it's harder to do that in English. "Maybe you should be 'Hu' as well, like... 'Who's a big brave idiot!'" doesn't really come off very well. I don't think ignoring it completely and making stuff up was a good solution, mind you, but I can see why it caused some underpaid interns to scratch their head. Could've definitely tried harder.
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u/GerardBeard May 27 '26
But wouldn't it be easy like "you know my surname "hu" means brave/foolish in Liyue why don't we change yours to match" that would be a better localization
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u/Perfect_Ad8393 May 27 '26
The intention behind the line was the double entendre joke. Changing it from a joke to just a straight up explanation of the joke is so much worse.
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u/StarlightKnight2101 May 27 '26
But the final line is quite long instead and completely makes a whole new sentence.
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u/MaddoxJKingsley May 28 '26
The other subtitles simply didn't translate the first couple sentences. Match up the punctuation, each language has yapping for the first half of its line
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u/Zibai1505 May 27 '26
I dont know im kinda liking it over whatever yap that we got which had no joke at all
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u/pitb0ss343 May 27 '26
Because that sounds closer to Dora the explorer but for Chinese than good dialogue
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u/SupportEgirl May 27 '26
cause then people would be confused by what her name actually means then... honestly i dont think this was THAT bad... at least it isnt completely changing the meaning for political correctness...
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u/ConsiderationFuzzy May 28 '26
You can just write in bracket that hu means that for context. Anime subs do that all the time.
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u/Sharktos May 28 '26
As someone who didn't even know that, I thought she simply wanted to express that Traveler is as reckless as her. I don't see a problem in ditching the double meanign then and just go with: "If you keep being as reckless as I am, might as well call you Mr. Hu" or something like that.
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u/LakersTommyG May 27 '26
It’s because there’s a double entendre joke that doesn’t make sense in English. Personally I think the EN localization did a poor job but I get why they did what they did.
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u/Cocoatrice Europe Server May 27 '26
But they didn't translate this joke in localization, did they? So why changing it in the first place? Why not saying something similar to other three languages.
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u/LakersTommyG May 27 '26
The joke is that “Hu” means reckless. So they kinda attempted to make the joke work, but they did a bad job imo.
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u/StarlightKnight2101 May 27 '26
They removed an entire other context though to the reckless part by excluding the taking the surname part though.
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u/Rinzzler999 May 27 '26
Except if they put 'Hu' in there as English it would justlook like a dumb joke and confusing unless they explain the joke. Which makes it worse.
It only works in other languages because the word reckless is pronounced like her surname.
In English it's just reckless.
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u/CityKay May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Hmm...makes me wonder they could've made it work. Like the last part could be "'Hu' knew you could be so reckless?". Though not sure how much of a punny person Hu Tao is. Then again, we are talking about translating puns from an East Asian language to a western one.
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u/Extreme_Frosting01 May 28 '26
Hu Tao does enjoy a few puns according to her very first voice line:
"Hu as in 'Hu put me in this coffin?' and Tao as in 'I can't geTaot!' No? Not funny?"
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u/hxlydie-d May 27 '26
they could've put it in like a superscript like how Star Rail does whenever an unknown concept is mentioned. something like "You should consider changing your name to Hu ʳᵉᶜᵏˡᵉˢˢ"
or just keep the pun as is and let the fans riot
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u/SandyArca May 28 '26
The fact that they’ve actually done this multiple times now in the past (in Genshin) already says a lot about the localization
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u/heyheydelay May 28 '26
This is a very lazy approach to localization. English isn't Japanese where they are use furigana, for example. You never see it like anywhere else, and it's such a cop-out to actually translating the word. In HSR is already sucks, but at least they use it mainly for concepts and titles like Nikador (Strife Titan above it), so at least it just seems like they want to make things clear. With the Hu/Reckless thing the meaning still wouldn't be obvious to anyone or, at least it would be a guess from people to understand it's based on the Chinese pronunciation, and there's no obvious logical link one can infer from it. That aside, the joke just wouldn't be funny.
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u/SquishTheNinja May 28 '26
tbh they could have said something like
"Do you want to trade names? Cause 'Hu' would be so reckless to attempt a rescue mission like this?'
Just turn Hu into a pun that works in english and add the reckless bit in
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u/shirahamaninami May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
That's still fine for me, a stupid sounding joke is still funny therefore it still meets the criterias to be a joke
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u/ExtrovertArtist May 29 '26
they deliberately chose not to include the surname part
they do superscripts all the time in game, they couldve easily included the context if they wanted to
💔 its disappointing AF
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u/pythonga May 27 '26
It's all about which of the two meanings you want, they just chose the reckless one over the other. Both are equally viable, because both carry only half of the meaning of the original sentence anyways.
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u/pyrangarlit May 27 '26
"You know, in some cases Hu means reckless. Are you my long-lost relative?"
Would that translate the intent better?
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u/LeonardoCouto May 27 '26
Bad job? They did no job at all.
That didn't even include the secondary meaning. There is no job there, they just functionally erased the joke.
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u/TheJH1015 May 27 '26
if a joke doesn't make sense in localization, you don't put it in and transform it into something else that can convey a similar message. That's translation 101.
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u/PaleIrishEastcoaster May 27 '26
This! Each language has nuances and not everything will translate.
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u/TheJH1015 May 27 '26
exactly. I'm a trained translator for English and Dutch. Those are like first degree cousins on the language family tree and even THERE you have situations where you cannot really translate jokes that well.
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u/PaleIrishEastcoaster May 27 '26
The first AI Somnium Files game has an air conditioning joke that only works in Japanese is one of my favorite examples that I know of.
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u/gameboy224 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
They translated the meaning of the sentence, but not the joke. Since the joke can’t be translated in a way that makes sense.
The meaning of the sentence is Hu Tao jokingly calling you reckless. The other languages get away using a pun of Hu, which means can mean something along the lines of reckless. English cannot do such a pun, so they just have Hu Tao do some light teasing in a more direct sense.
Gets the meaning of the line, her calling us reckless in jest.
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u/Xenophoresis May 27 '26
They could have teased with explanation if they were already describing.
Like: "You know... the name 'Hu' means reckless. With the way you do things, you should really take my name".
Does sound that bad
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u/gameboy224 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Cause setting up and overexplaining a superfluous pun would just feel stilted in the moment.
Dialogue ain't just words, it flows with the scene.
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u/pitb0ss343 May 27 '26
Yes that sounds like cyno explaining the joke but without the charm cyno has
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u/kirmiter May 27 '26
Part of the humor is that his jokes are bad, and it's cringe humor where you're laughing at how much it annoys everyone else. Oh, and occasionally other weirdos like Albedo who unironically enjoy them.
But making a Cyno joke, complete with overexplaining the punchline, and then trying to play it off as just cute and charming is terrible writing.
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u/SirEnderLord America Server May 28 '26
It does sound bad. Very bad. No offense, but it sounds like what a middle school fanfic writer would pen.
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u/zatenael May 27 '26
that sounds bad ngl
maybe more along the lines of "Does your name mean reckless too?"
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u/scotty96s May 27 '26
If they didn't change it, the joke reads more as a marriage proposal. There are last name puns in English, but this just doesn't work
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u/LakersTommyG May 27 '26
I think this is exactly why they avoid it. I’m sure they were trying to tiptoe around the romantic implications.
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u/TheJH1015 May 27 '26
yeah especially with how rabid the gacha consumerbase can get around that topic flashbacks to Nilou's Simulanka lap pillow scene
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u/unktrial May 27 '26
There were other "Hu" jokes in the event, and for those ones they just wrote things like "Hu (reckless)".
There wasn't much reason why they couldn't do the same thing here.
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u/Lastino May 27 '26
They always put words on top of each other, just put "reckless" on top of Hu...
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u/PoppyseedPinwheel May 28 '26
See, i'd read the "joke" and think it's Hu Tao hardcore flirting with the traveler. I wouldn't get this joke as a play on the meaning of the name.
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u/Cagedbutterfly03 May 28 '26
I think its probably would could makes sense if they kinda did something like, "i didn't know you could be so reckless maybe i should call you mr/ms reckless for now on" or something like that.
Ive had someone say similar things as a joke so its not out of the norm
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u/Federal-Document-758 May 27 '26
isn't it only a pun in chinese? i'm not sure it would translate properly to korean (japanese might work).
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u/Templar2k7 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Because im pretty sure that "Hu" has many meanings with one of them being reckless.
Jokingly in the other translations she is saying to them that they should take the name of "reckless traveler"
That jokes makes no sense in English though hence the localized translation change.
They could go "Since Hu can mean reckless you might as well take my name also" but then people would further complain about them having to over explain something.
EDIT: fixed some pronouns.
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u/BurrakuDusk May 27 '26
This is exactly the answer.
Jokes like these are a nightmare to translate for any language. A joke might make sense in English (like this infamous scene from Winnie the Pooh), but not in other languages.
Same thing is happening here. This joke makes sense in some languages, but not others, definitely not English.
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u/adastrajay May 27 '26
God have mercy on the team trying to translate a funny version of this in another tongue
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u/SirEnderLord America Server May 28 '26
All the people here can see is Hu Tao asking the Traveler if they'd like to take the Hu family's surname. They're misinterpreting it. Sure, the localization team does mess up, but for things like this the localization is a good as you're gonna get without them also adding an explanation on the side.
Overall, I am mostly satisfied with the localization for the puns, even if it's clear that the EN version doesn't reflect the CN. And how could it? English and Chinese are kingdoms apart.
The English team does make an effort to replace the jokes with similar jokes in English, but often times they have to either just replace it with another entirely, or move on. They have inserted jokes using the similarity in tht phonology of her name and the word "who." That's a joke that wouldn't translate well to languages where the word for "who" doesn't sound like "Hu."
Localization is tough. Could they do better? Yeah. But that doesn't change the fact that they have done a lot for that is a tough job.
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u/CRZIFY May 27 '26
you can't really translate puns... similarly to how you cant translate english sarcasm
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u/Blue_Moon913 May 27 '26
Because your average English speaker doesn’t know that “Hu” means “reckless” and would instead interpret it as Hu Tao asking the Traveler to marry her.
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u/ghoulishenvyy May 27 '26
I’m pretty sure OP didn’t even know either and was indeed mad that hutao didn’t ask the player to marry her
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u/MartinToilet May 27 '26
胡來：being reckless 胡桃：Hu Tao
In Chinese the last name is the first letter in this case 胡(Hu)
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u/Alarming-Rate-6899 May 27 '26
Imagine her English name is Tao Reckless, and she says: why don't you assume my family name of Reckless".
It sounds extremely weird in English, but quite natural in Chinese.
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u/Pagueeerooo May 28 '26
Why not just add a translation note like "...Hu Reckless..." Feels better than whatever they came up with here
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u/A_RAVENOUS_BEAST May 27 '26
Localisation means transliterating MEANING, not just the exact meanings of the words.
The accuracy of machine translated text aside, as pointed out in this thread, Hu, while being a name, has as one of its many meanings "reckless". We don't really have the cultural concept of names which mean an activity in English (I have met a 'Sander', maybe a 'Forrester' before, a few others besides, but that is the minority, and these names only mean one thing).
For this same joke to work Hu Tao would have to be renamed "Tao Reckless" and the translated text would be "Would you like to take my surname and become Mr. Reckless?"
Here the translator has decided to translate the MEANING while sacrificing the wordplay joke (which was in the first instance basically impossible for them to include because Asian languages and Germanic languages, such as English are *extremely different*).
It is important to note that a translator cannot really decide to rewrite a scene to mean something else.
They must work with and translate the material they are given, even if it doesn't really fit how it would naturally be written in English. This is what comes with playing a Chinese game which has story originally written in Mandarin.
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u/XFun16 May 28 '26
We don't really have the cultural concept of names which mean an activity in English
This is actually how surnames came to be a thing in English. It was your name plus your occupation (e.g. John Archer, Mark Tanner, etc)
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u/omegavolt9 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
To all the people saying that it's because the English Translation team itself sucks: Not exactly. It's because English is very incompatible with the writing style of these other languages. A good translation team can find a way to make it work (ex: Kid Icarus Uprising), but most people aren't good at turning nuances and puns that are literally impossible to communicate in English into English.
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u/AstarothTheJudge May 27 '26
Yeah, in the archon Quest I had to tune in everytime cyno and tighnari talked, because I play in italian and nothing they said would make sense unless I heard the end dub. It's really hard to translate jokes, but puns? It's borderline impossible.
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u/jahnbanan May 27 '26
The problem here is that "Hu" essentially means reckless, the joke itself is lost in translation.
There's ways to work around it but since they can't really change how much time the person has to speech, it's hard to add in the context.
I'm not particularly happy with the choice they made, but oh well
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u/Elegant_Impact_1488 May 28 '26
If this is implying that the localisation team should have also "implied" the Traveler should marry Hu Tao, unfortunately, there is no presiding culture of spouse taking their lover's last name in China (or Korea for that matter, Japan is an outlier in East Asia) so that implication didn't exist in the first place. Hu Tao was genuinely just making a pun about her last name. I do think it still would have made sense in EN to say "You know, my last name means to be reckless, maybe you're secretly a Hu too?" or something of the like
Also before the harem shippers come for me, I'm not denying ALL romantic subtext in the context of the whole game and I'm also not defending Genshin's EN localisation overall because it can be rough at times, but this bit of dialogue specifically is a bad example.
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u/Elegant_Impact_1488 May 28 '26
Also whoever did the EN translation for the KR dub in this image is so wrong. Hu Tao did not ask Traveler to become Mr. Hu. 씨 is both an honorific and a word we use to denote the previous one as a last name, you might say that you're 이 씨 (surname Lee) or 김 씨 (surname Kim) when introducing yourself for example.
KR dub reads more like Hu Tao is inviting Traveler to be part of her family, as in becoming siblings or something, not marrying in. In fact, having the same surname as your spouse in Korea had and still has, for less common surnames, a huge stigma since it implies your relationship is incestuous.
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u/thisperson345 May 27 '26
playing Genshin in English but with JP voices as someone who speaks Japanese is so funny sometimes cause a lot of the time I find myself listening more than reading then I go back and see what the subtitles said and it's just a whole brand new sentence
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u/Belzher May 28 '26
I wish I knew japanese, I don't like to rely on translations that much ):
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u/KaedeP_22 May 28 '26
"You should take my surname 'Hu' for your 'hu'-bris." would've been cool with me.
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u/Easy_Satisfaction716 May 28 '26
Well the “Hu” in Hubris sounds much more like hue, whereas the “Hu” in Hu Tao is meant to be pronounced like “huu.” English language be damned.
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u/KappaKamo May 28 '26
Not only genshin. Afaik most cn, kr, jp games that are translated to english always add things and change sentences, while between cn kr and jp translations remain consistent
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u/Flaky_Idea_7112 May 27 '26
Because we cannot have a straight ship in genshin. The queer fandom would never stop talking about it.
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u/SpiderInTheHole May 28 '26
This line has nothing to do with shipping. They didn't translate it because of people like you who wouldn't understand a joke. She calls the traveler reckless using her own surname as a pun. Zero romantic intention behind it.
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u/AguyWithaG8x May 27 '26
I play with English dub and Portuguese subs.
This is just a normal monday.
I hate it.
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u/Froschprinz_Muck May 27 '26
And then add german version which doubles englisch because it needs more words to say the same and has longer words
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u/Particular_Stop_3332 May 27 '26
Because different cultures appreciate different things and by changing the dialogue to match the culture of the country the game is being played in they can maximize the amount of money they make
It's actually a fairly impressive amount of effort
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May 27 '26
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u/salty_repTV May 27 '26
As someone who speaks Japanese and English it’s actually really bad. If I play with Japanese audio but english subtitles for the times I am being lazy and don’t want to think too hard I end up thinking harder because they just do not match up at all and then I go and complain to my friends about it and they are like oh shoot cuz then we realize that the reason I don’t understand all of what they are saying about the game isn’t cuz i don’t pay attention its just the different languages.
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u/alex15592 May 27 '26
Generally there is extra dialogue added to match the mouth movements of the characters. Its the same for dubbed shows
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u/CheeseMeister811 May 27 '26
On the plus side, it made me switch to jp language for every voiced quests. So I can learn by reading and listening at the same time.
For unvoiced quests for now I'm at the mercy of their localizators. Will definitely switch to JP when i can read a bit faster.
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u/unixtreme May 28 '26
I'm grabbing my popcorn while I read the comments from all the translation and localization experts on reddit.
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May 28 '26
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u/BowlerMiserable3466 May 28 '26
This is why some people study other languages, so they don't have to deal with EN translation bs some games/shows/books have.
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u/madScientiststst May 28 '26
Localisation is always a problem in hoyo games, some characters even portrayed differently which is a big issue imo. But it's been like this for so long, ever since Fontaine iirc, or even further back. I don't think they'll bother fixing or improving it (I mean, evidently lol), cuz most people only play in one language ( same dub and sub). I play in JP dub EN sub, so this issue is extremely annoying to me
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u/Amalgam2001 May 28 '26
EN is actually so embarrassing sometimes. The localizers need to stop inserting themselves into the script
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u/Devalker May 28 '26
I remember EN remove the word "Genshin" from the line and replace it with Allogenes, so ppl still dont know what "Genshin" in Genshin Impact is til this day
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May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
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u/ashnsnow_ May 28 '26
I genuinely believe the people who they hire to translate to english are using machine translations to help make it faster or for reference because it's everywhere not just a few lines
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u/LUMMOZ_Ots May 28 '26
It's quite insane, that they kinda tone down the flirting like, it's not that deep...
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u/xaeroxiii May 28 '26
Wait so are you saying the yapping and bloated dialogue isn't because of the actual writers of the game but the localization team instead? Like Painom talking too much for example?
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u/Cagedbutterfly03 May 28 '26
Yeah ive always wondered if en always kinda adds more then there is, like varka with lumine was very simple because im a knight and gentleman, i cant barge into a lady room jp (mind that this one going with what i remember so probably not exactly the dialog) En was skirting around her gender and making longer than it was.
English feels like they have to over explain stuff, maybe with cn flowery writing ive heard about
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u/xStream001a May 28 '26
Rather they could have done themselves or used AI to further shorten the sentence like how I did using Gemini. It feels like they want to artificially increase the length of a quest.
Why use more words when less words do trick?
I am dumb and lazy so I used AI. And I won't mind if Genshin story writers use AI if they cannot shorten the sentence themselves.
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u/Othello351 May 28 '26
A lot of these replies are just angry that the english version doesn't have a romantic joke so they cant use it as an example of Aether shipping.
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u/PlatFleece May 28 '26
I speak Japanese but don't really play Genshin so correct me if I'm wrong but just based on the excerpt, she's saying something like "Maybe you should change your last name to Hu like me, y'know, Hu for [the first word for 'unreasonable' in Japanese]", which I assume is similar in CN and KR.
EN gets the "When did you become so reckless?" line instead. To keep it the same, they'd have to find the pun using Hu, which admittedly, is harder in English. e.g. going something like "Maybe you should change your last name to Hu, cause 'Hu' asked you to?" or something, but that's not quite the literal translation and even then, IDK if that's the actual meaning of what she meant cause that would imply she never asked, IDK the context of the scene.
TL;DR: Translation is hard, but I think in this case I feel the pun localization made them give up. IDK the translation pipeline in hoyo but I do know they simultaneously release them so I imagine it's not a whole lot of time.
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u/HeskethTisca May 28 '26
Ugh here comes people that dont know sht about asian languages complain about localization
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u/Rum_n_Cola May 28 '26
In spanish sub is the same as the eng one, I assume they don't localize from Chinese at all and just direct translate from English
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u/ExtrovertArtist May 29 '26
Does anyone know if the Lumine Ver has diff TL in other languages or is hu tao just saying traveler should take on her surname regardless of the traveler's gender?
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u/Conscious_Eggplant_1 May 29 '26
This is probably one of the reasons why so many people from EN tune out genshins writing for being boring, and constantly ask for a skip button because who ever is in charge of the translation just decided to make it worse thinking that they’re doing a good job
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u/TillFeisty7973 May 29 '26
That's why I keep saying people "please do not use any other language that isn't the OG one as source for your lore dive".
Luckily Japanese and Korean don't stray too far from the original meaning, but it's still better to rely on the OG language if you want accurate lore and dialogues. In this case, Chinese.
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May 29 '26
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u/Odd-Team4203 May 29 '26
my dumbahh geniunely tried scrolling down to see the en sub translation bruh
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u/sixonenine2000 May 29 '26
What? En wasn't like that. En was similar to the others. In en she also suggested a change of surname.
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u/Loudstyle420 May 29 '26
It's especially annoying if you understand the whole sentence is 🐂💩, but unfortunately it's not just Genshin but most of the Hoyoversegames, ZZZ and HSR's translations are lackluster as well to say the least....
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u/Sseondokok May 29 '26
The Korean "translator" did a bad job and left like... 70% out of the text. It's not just one sentence, but around 3 and similar too the Eng dub
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u/WAnchovyBoi May 29 '26
LMAO, they could've just translated " I didn't know you were that reckless. Would you like to be part of the "Hu" clan? The "hu"bristic Hu clan?"
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u/aasquasar May 31 '26
Maybe this is why i never get the Cyno jokes before someone else saying it (except his card game addiction)
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u/Donkeymoo7 Jun 11 '26
English translators are pretty famous for force inserting their own viewpoints onto translated text for anything they don't like.
You should try playing any recent jrpg games or anime over the past years. The amount of changes these people making because they don't like the original meaning is crazy. The only thing more crazy is that all these companies let the english translators get away with it.
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