Chinese songs title suddenly translated to ENGLISH ??

[cdiony]

I listen to both English and Chinese songs and since last week I released that LOTS and LOTS of songs with chinese characters suddenly got replaced by English, either in PinYin or direct translation. Now most of the songs title are NOT RECOGNISABLE.

This happen and I believe could be due to following.

1) This is a translation algorithm within Spotify.

2) This is the metadata provided by the record company.

If it is (1), please fix it. If it is (2), don't Spotify have a policy to insist that metadata supplied by record owner MUST BE IN NATIVE LANGUAGE?

This is a deal breaker NOW after being a premium user for a long time and I really enjoy Spotify.

Attached a playlist of chinese songs curated by Spotify and the circled portions are example of  what happen since last week.

Plan

Premium

Country

Singapore

Device

(iPhone 13 Pro Max, Samsung Tab S8)

Operating System

(iOS 15.5, Android 11)

My Question or Issue

[thechipsahoy]

Yep, same thing with the issue here and it's annoying. Hopefully this will be fixed very quickly, I would dislike having to switch to another streaming platform. 

[ashie99]

This happened to me too, upset as all the songs are unrecognisable - some changed to pinyin, some translated to english. What is We Will by JJ Lin??!!

Dear Spotify, bilingual people exist! Please fix this.

[CDX008]

Amazon Prime music had a similar "english as chinese songs title" issue and that was why I switched to Spotify. There was no way to search songs or even know what song i'm playing when it's in some weird English translation or random PinYin that's not even in the native Cantonese or Mandarin format. I do wish Spotify reviews these concerns and corrects/fix this.

[yonglum-sg1]

The change made today indeed created lots of issues for those who listen to Chinese and Cantonese songs. The translation is sometimes meaningless. A better feature is to allow customers to opt for a Chinese song name or the English version.

[thechipsahoy]

Most recently, the majority of the chinese songs in my playlist have been translated to Pinyin or English. This is very annoying, as I prefer to read the title in the characters and the translation to pinyin/english makes it very hard to identify. Additionally, Cantonese songs now get more confusing to identify as well. Please fix this Spotify!

See post below for more info.
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Chinese-songs-title-suddenly-translated-to-ENGLIS...

This happen and I believe could be due to following.

1) This is a translation algorithm within Spotify.

2) This is the metadata provided by the record company.

If it is (1), please fix it. If it is (2), don't Spotify have a policy to insist that metadata supplied by record owner MUST BE IN NATIVE LANGUAGE?

Plan

Free

Country

USA

Device

(Samsung Galaxy S21, Chromebook but use the Web App)

Operating System

(Android 12, Chrome OS)

Attached is images of issues on my end.

[plstakeintoconsidera]

Please keep chinese song titles in chinese, it's hard to find songs since we know them well in chinese characters & not the translated version

or an option in setting to keep songs title in their original language

im not sure if it's a region thing cuz my taiwan friends have their chinese songs in their original chinese titles

so im sure it's not that hard to give us(those who are not in Chinese based countries) back, please revert back to default 😞 thankuthanku

Plan

Premium

Country

singapore

Device

samsung note 10 5g

Operating System

android 12/one ui 4.1

[jollybaba]

I was scrolling through most of the chinese songs and was super shocked to see English and pin yin titles. Absolutely no clue which song I can choose for some of the titles in English. Spotify needs to fix this as it seriously create issues for us as listeners, affecting the entire mood to listen to these songs too.

[dkr5eb_-42bx]

I've experienced this issue too. From what I learnt on another Hong Kong forum, this is Spotify's recent 'pilot' scheme - so it's not a bug or system error; the change is intentional. I would seriously consider switching platform if they insist on this. It's not only inconvenient, it's also discriminatory. Trying to Latinise an entire language with no opt-out? Spotify, you've got to do better than this.

[Sabientje65]

Noticed it earlier today; quiet a few Japanese song titles suddenly translated/transliterated. Only makes searching for the music harder; cherry on top is the language being chock-full of homophones utilizing different characters. 🙂

Would be great if this change could be reverted.

[tamanoko]

They can’t think this is a good idea. Who does this even help?

 

[jaylena]

I hate it here! Please change it back to chinese. I can’t even recognize the songs on my playlist unless I actively translate. Also, some of the pinyin are very wrong. For example, it’s “Qi Li Xiang” by Jay Chou, not “Chi Li Shiang”. 

[Slysoft]

This must be a mistake right? Even in the Japanese region the songs appear in english / romaji instead of Japanese. Only some of them though. It makes no sense.

[morrishnikov1]

Please fix this!

[kabi777]

Same thing happened to me, Spotify please fix this asap!

[FatPenguin2]

Soptify has clearly failed its international customer base!

[MarkMatrix430]

Same issue for me. I will be cancelling my subscription if this isnt changed back. It is absolutely ridiculous and renders all songs unidentifiable. Atrocious decision and an insult to the Cantonese community by displaying Mandarin Pinyin for Cantonese songs.

[Foderme]

I’m experiencing this too and it’s so annoying! Especially with Jay Chou’s new album  

[FatPenguin2]

This issue gets even worse! I switched the default language of my device to Chinese just to make using Spotify more bearable in showing Chinese songs in the default script. SPOTIFY THEN GOES ON TO TRANSLATE THE TITLE OF ENGLISH SONGS INTO CHINESE!! 

[teohrh]

This is really a bad move Spotify, why change something that works ?? Please revert to the original version if not you would lose many subscribers! 

[ClassicalListener]

I have a premium account, and this is driving my crazy. I would consider changing my music subscription to another provider, because I hate this change. As you say, looking at your play list, I have no idea what the songs are.