A stale translation passes every check and still tells a different story

From 24th to 25th September 2026, the development team covered the translation process of Myriad Immortal Sect, a game translated into eleven languages. The writer, who handled the English and Simplified Chinese translations, shares the challenges faced during the process. Initially, checks for the translations were purely mechanical, ensuring that all necessary elements were present and intact.

However, this method failed to reveal the true state of the translations, as native readers often found discrepancies that automated tests would overlook. Overwhelmingly, the biggest issue was the staleness of the translations. Many translated lines were written against an older English version, and even though they remained unchanged, they now conveyed outdated information.

By querying the history of the translated lines, the writer discovered that approximately two hundred interface lines per language had been edited in the English version after the translations were completed. This led to numerous issues, such as recipe hints directing players to the sect instead of the General Store, bidding requesting a realm no longer in use, and world bosses appearing every full moon with outdated rewards.

Additionally, the writer identified inconsistencies in quest stories, where translations still referred to a deceased rival or claimed that a master begged for a Foundation Pill. To address these issues, the team now runs a report listing potential candidates for outdated translations, rather than defects. The second category of problems identified was terminology.

Within a single language, the same stat could be labeled with multiple terms, leading to confusion. For example, the sect's Contribution was labeled as "Merit" in seven languages. In Indonesian and Malay, the skill tree and top bar used different words for "Insight," and "Divine Sense" had different names on the alchemy screen and stats panel.

To rectify this, the team now assigns one name per term, anchored to its own catalogue, ensuring consistency across all languages. The glossary of cultivation terms on the website serves as the English reference for the other languages. Similarly, register terms were treated differently across languages, with the Russian interface using informal "you" on main screens and formal "you" in other gameplay lines, resulting in inconsistent voice usage.

The team has now standardized the voice usage throughout the game. Borrowed glyphs and punctuation also posed challenges for some languages. For instance, six Japanese strings used simplified Chinese characters, two Korean descriptions contained bare Chinese characters without glosses, and Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai texts retained Chinese full-width double dashes and six-dot ellipses.

Additionally, traditional Chinese, generated from Simplified Chinese, used Mainland vocabulary instead of local vocabulary, leading to the use of Mainland terms for server, account, and login in 87 lines. To resolve these issues, the team has now pinned these lines to local vocabulary and is ensuring that the next regeneration keeps these changes.

In terms of quest text, only English and Chinese had names authored for slot placeholders like "your sect," "your master," and "your rival." Consequently, the rest of the languages fell back to using English names. The team has now updated the quest text to use each language's own codex names, consistent with the map and codex. These improvements aim to provide a more seamless and accurate experience for players across all eleven languages.