Darkest Dungeon Meets Classical Chinese
By Sirius WolfOn May 8th 2023, Darkest Dungeon II launched its 1.0 version on Steam after 19 months spent in Early Access on the Epic Game Store. The game is set in a gothic fantasy world, and when it comes to text, an avalanche of old-fashioned terms and phrases makes it clear that the story is set in a time quite distant from modern days.
How to tackle this distance became quite the challenge for Luminous and me, the two Simplified Chinese translators who took on the challenge of translating this game. However, as video game translators, we always come prepared to face all sorts of challenges…
Here are some examples of what we did, and our thought process behind these decisions!
Ancient Metaphors
In Darkest Dungeon II, the Leper has a skill called Ruin which allows him to gain a damage boost whenever he takes damage himself. This is a simple word, and we had planned on translating it directly—until we realized we couldn’t.
In English, the word “ruin” can be used both as a noun and as a verb, casting a shade of positive ambiguity upon it. While this is also true for its direct Chinese translation, “毁灭”, the word is usually used as a verb meaning “to destroy”, or, in a video game context, “to devastate”. Now, imagine what you would assume of a skill called “devastate”—it should deal significant damage, right? Hence why it would be a very confusing name for the skill in question, which provides a buff and deals no damage.
With the most straightforward approach blocked, we decided to take a closer look at the skill and tried to discern its intended meaning, not only literally, but also figuratively, i.e. what connotation it carries and what emotion it incites.
The Leper is a virtuous man and a resolute fighter. Despite slowly fading away due to his illness, he still dedicates his remaining days to fighting for the world. He is also very poetic and often speaks in metaphors. With this knowledge combined with the skill’s effect, what the skill name implies becomes apparent: the Leper is drawing power from his own ruinous state (taking damage himself) to bring ruin to his enemies (gaining a damage boost).
After discerning this, we brainstormed and spent hours drawing inspiration from ancient Chinese literature to find a word that best represents this array of meanings. Finally, we came upon a good candidate: 玉碎
玉碎 directly translates as Shattered Jade. This is a common Chinese metaphor originating from Classical Chinese literature. It means dying a virtuous death, or sacrificing for a just cause. Nowadays it’s often used in phrases like “宁为玉碎，不为瓦全”, which can be translated as “Would rather be shattered as a jade than stay whole as a tile. (Would rather die a noble death.)” This sums up the Leper’s personality and the skill’s theme perfectly!
On top of that, this metaphor is also well-known as a quote from Guan Yu, a renowned general from ancient China, which he spoke during the events that led to his death in the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms: “玉可碎而不可改其白，竹可焚而不可毁其节。(Jade can be broken, but its clarity cannot be changed; bamboo can be burned, but its integrity cannot be destroyed.)” While the word “玉碎” itself is not a direct reference to this quote, it further convinced us to use the metaphor as the translation for the skill.
We did a couple of other skills in this style as well, such as Reflection: “明鉴” (“bright mirror”, often used as a metaphor for good perception, or the wise rule of a king). These additions allow the Leper to be a proper poetic monarch in Simplified Chinese!
Poetic references
Darkest Dungeon II is a game of many references, many of which come from pop culture, especially modern music and movies. However, these references would almost never work in other cultures, and due to their nature, they can end up being quite confusing if translated directly. We could simply disregard these references, but then the text wouldn’t be as amusing to players, so we decided to come up with our own references.
Instead of making references to pop culture, however, we ended up drawing even more inspiration from classical works. When translating regional effects and challenges, we came up with quite a handful of clever references, but two of them stand out: there’s a regional challenge called “In the Light” which requires the player to keep the Flame at 40+, and another challenge called “Naked and Afraid” which requires the player to complete the region without any stagecoach upgrades. Both of these are distinct references that wouldn’t work when translated directly.
When reading through ancient poetry looking for ideas, we stumbled upon Tao Yuanming’s 《归园田居》( “Returning to the countryside”), a set of poems that describe the poet’s life after his withdrawal from governmental politics.
After some consideration, we translated the two regional effects as follows:
In the light: 荆薪明烛 (Literally: Firewood burnt as candles)
This name refers to a line from Tao’s poetry: “日入室中暗，荆薪代明烛。” Literally: “The room gets dark after sunset, and I burn firewood instead of candles.” Candles could be hard to come by in the countryside (this was written back in ~400 AD), so this can be interpreted in different ways: candles can symbolize urban technology as opposed to firewood as countryside austerity; or it can be understood as the poet being happy to make do with what he has, which is indeed a roguelike mindset and fits the game well!
Naked and Afraid: 复返自然
This name refers to another line from Tao’s poetry: “久在樊笼里，复得返自然。” Literally: “After a long time trapped in the cage, I’m finally able to return to nature.” This is a simple one, and “return to nature” describes the effect (going with no stagecoach upgrades) quite well already, but on top of that, the stagecoach is sometimes referred to as a cage, especially when the heroes are driven to the edge of meltdowns. This is another minor detail that we’re proud of!
Positive Ambiguity
In Darkest Dungeon II, there’s a type of trinket called cultist trinkets which symbolizes the negative qualities of humanity. Once activated by another trinket called “Dark Impulse”, these cultist trinkets give significant bonuses in exchange for heavy drawbacks. Unlike most other items, these trinkets all have abstract names to reflect their nature, like Cruel Intent and Selfish Motivation.
While these names can be translated directly (i.e. 残忍意图、自私动机), due to their abstract nature, players might struggle to remember which is which. It would be painful to hear players refer to these items as “the one that blinds, I forgot its name”. Considering these are outstanding items, could we do something to make them more memorable while also maintaining their original meaning and style?
After much thought, we took inspiration from the “ruin” skill explained above. Ambiguity! Positive ambiguity is a thing that the source text of Darkest Dungeon II uses repeatedly, which naturally fits with the items’ abstractness.
Ambiguity is easy to achieve in Chinese. In modern Chinese, most words are compounds written with two or more characters, so if we take a single character out, it’ll often have multiple possible meanings. (This is also why Classical Chinese is often very ambiguous, as it regularly uses single-character words for conciseness.)
After picking our approach, the next step was to pick the most fitting characters for the trinkets. As ambiguity involves multiple meanings, but the source text has only one, what extra meaning should we throw in? Well, the only reasonable option was the actual effects of the trinkets!
So this is what we tried to do: translate these cultist trinkets’ names into single-character ambiguous abstract concepts that both reflect their names in English and their actual effects. Sounds insane, right? Well, we managed to pull it off! For example, Cruel Intent, the trinket that grants extra damage, but blinds you, got translated as 灭, which means “to exterminate” (消灭), but also “lights out” (光芒熄灭). Selfish Motivation, the trinket that gives negative tokens, but increases your damage for each one, got translated as 浊, which can be interpreted as “impure mind” (i.e. being selfish), but also “to make muddy” (by granting negative tokens).
Taking into consideration how these single-character names would display on screen, we also employed a pair of heavy brackets【】to improve their presentation.
We have many more of these localization stories to tell, either from our work on Darkest Dungeon II or other games. However, three cases are quite enough for now.
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Darkest Dungeon II is available on Steam and Epic Games Store
Localization by From the Void:
French, German, Italian, Spanish (LatAm), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Polish, Czech, Japanese, Chinese Simplified, Ukrainian