Vague Plurals and Silksong Boss Names - When Context is Not Enough

Poshanka, my fellow word-warrior-bugs!

A while back, among the near-incessant chatter of an over-400-strong WhatsApp group of Brazilian translators, a somewhat short-lived topic piqued my interest: plurality, and the quirky little ways our languages designate groups and how, sometimes, even though there's a number RIGHT. THERE., acknowledging or challenging that number gets you weird looks.

Easy example from the language you’re reading right now: imagine we’re at a park, there’s only a few people in sight and I ask you “how many people are there?” and you say “a couple”. If I then ask: “are they holding hands?”, you’d be forgiven for wondering if I’m sight-impaired or loopy.

This might sound silly for some of you, but my colleagues over at Carameloc (the aforementioned translator Avengers Initiative) discussed at length how annoying it is when people assume “a couple” means exactly two, like we sometimes see in translated texts. It’s a vague plural, like “dozens”, it can mean anything from 2 to maybe 5 or 6, at which point you might consider switching to the slightly-larger-but-still-modest “several”.

To us Brazilians, “dozen” still means specifically a multiple of 12, like a dozen eggs, and if you translate “dozens” as “dúzias”, people will wonder if you took the time to take stock and registered precisely 24, 48, or 72 of whatever it is you’re counting.

Similarly, if you were to translate the Brazilian expression “meia dúzia de gatos pingados” as “half a dozen latte cats”, at the very least it’d sound humorous and even adorable. However, the entire expression is actually a dismissive approximation of a small group of people, usually when a lot more were expected (like in those avant-garde music festivals with bands that you swear haven’t ever paid a single bill in their lives). You still call it “half a dozen”, even when there might be ten times more people than that. Oh, and “pingado” is how you order a latte at a bakery or cafe in São Paulo.

One last example, for the heck of it: in Portuguese, “numerosos” (“numerous”, translated literally) is less impactful than “inúmeros” (“numberless”, “innumerous”), when in English you’d see both used almost interchangeably.

Getting to the point of this article and circling back to my previous text, there’s no such thing as too much context, but all the context in the world is worthless if you, the translator, can’t metabolize the information at least as well as the source writers. Some names, a few marketing text choices, most dialogues, and every single piece of lore have reasons behind them. If they don’t, that’s bad writing, meaningless fluff, sausage filling.

With those - hopefully sound and interesting - reasons in hand, your job is to lay them out and connect the dots, asking yourself what angle the writers took or, even better, whether the angle you’re taking says the same thing as the original. That can be as simple as switching around the passive and active voices of a sentence, choosing the right keyword to emphasize or noticing an unusual space breaking up a common word (foreshadowing~~~).

Being able to change the dial between “thinking like the writers” and “thinking like the audience” is hard, but it’s the mark of a true localization professional.

SPOILER ALERTfor Hollow Knight: Silksong!

At the end of Act 2 of this amazing game, you fight the origin of the curse plaguing the land of Pharloom, who ensnares the defenseless pilgrims in parasitic silk and turns them into aggressive zombies: Grand Mother Silk.

Now, because social media algorithms are relentless, even as I started playing the game one week after launch, I was eventually flooded with fan animations, tutorials, reviews - and spoilers, of course. While I managed to avoid most of the major story beats, I still glimpsed the final challenge at the top of the Citadel of Song. And it got me thinking: “granny silk?”

Having seen only a couple of frames of the boss, I immediately imagined I’d be fighting an elderly Weaver using her last dregs of strength to secure a replacement as the Citadel’s figurehead, not the long-haired, statuesque force of nature with probably the most kickass theme song of the game so far.

And I was pleasantly surprised when her title card came up and it read “Grande Mãe Seda” (Great/Grand <SPACE!> Mother Silk). That’s stellar. That’s understanding the assignment. Silk is the divine entity that rules Pharloom, whose pilgrims walk, labor, fight, and frequently die to reach her abode and be taken into her embrace. She is the Grand Mother. Suppression of dissent, historical revisionism, and religious brainwashing aside, that’s how you address a divine ruler.

In an industry with plenty of people who’d look at this character’s name, translate it as “Vovó Seda” (Grandmother Silk) and call it a day, be the one who notices that space. Inquire about it. Try to see the world as the writers do. And writers (thought you’d be walking away scot-free, didja?), be thorough about your explanation. Help us love your game as much as you do, and we’ll give back the focused creativity it deserves.

That’s all for today. A shout-out to the lovely folks at Carameloc, for inspiring this reflection, and the talented localization team for Hollow Knight Silksong, whom we’ve been “tearing silk” at (ha!) these last few paragraphs. (”to tear silk” means “to heavily compliment”)

Let us know if your language has any quirky expressions that are easy to misuse if you’re not careful. We’re genuinely curious!