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

[cdiony]

Hey folks!

In connection to the recent test for the way multilingual data is used - we are working to revert the translated titles!
The change should be reflected soon 🙂
Clear your cache if you continue to experience issues.
Thanks & cheers!

[theduckside]

It is reported in Singapore news that Spotify will revert the changes . Finally!

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/spotify-mandarin-songs-cantopop-translated-english-users-c...

[michelleluihy]

thank you for raising the question.

I have no idea which song I am listening to by looking at the translated English title, or even worse, the pinyin title (yeah Chinese is my mother language yet I know nothing about pinyin, which is the case for millions of Hong Kong people).

This has troubled me for a few days already,

Spotify please fix this problem!

[justebelmont]

This is such a terrible feature to have as mandatory. I should hope this is only showing up for people with English as their display language. Even so, are bilinguals supposed to just put up with it? And what of people studying the language and trying to get as much exposure as possible?

[tyc]

I have already set the language as Chinese. Why does the app still show certain Cantonese albums in pinyin? Please fix this annoying problem Spotify!

[cdiony]

I am from Singapore and I am the one who raised the issue. I feel like a superhero now.

Now that the local news pick up the story too. So dear Spotify, please learn from this, for every change you want to make, put yourselves in listener's shoe and ask, is this really necessary.

I think there are enough staff in Spotify who feel the same pain as us, WHY NO ONE GO AGAINST THIS IDEA?

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/spotify-mandarin-songs-cantopop-translated-english-users-c...

[shadowoflight]

Useful, but make it a switch.

[ashie99]

this has actually already been an ongoing issue, albeit in smaller areas and not a full blown, rude change like this one - eg. Searching for an artist in chinese will have the artist’s name in english show up instead. Minor annoyances that could and should be fixed since not everyone needs the english localisation. A switch to toggle whether we want things localised to our own language can solve this - let your users decide how they want to view and search for their music, Spotify!

Glad that this change is being reverted - though to what extent, I’m not sure. I hope this outcry reminds Spotify to look from their users’ - and I don’t mean only a certain demographic - point of view before rolling out such “features”.

[phua_jy]

我这位新加坡人前几天看到郑伊健歌名几乎变成汉语拼音傻眼了。还好现在大部分歌名恢复到繁体字，希望剩下的英文名字可以改回去。

[Melbourne]

Clear your cache and app history. It made a difference to me.

[phua_jy]

Yes, please display all C-pop singer/band names in Chinese and merge duplicate artiste profiles as far as possible!  (e.g. the verified Feng Ze profile with the earlier Kenny Khoo 邱峰泽 profile)

[Yuri76]

Cleared my cache and app history, no changes yet on any of my Japanese music.

[Loneliest_Cabin]

It may take as long as 24 hours to see the changes take effect for all languages. By this time 20th July everyone should see it. 

[hello671]

I dont know if this is the right place but is anyone else their genre mix playlist from spotify itself broken. It puts kpop into my mandopop and jpop mix. Meanwhile the kpop mix is just fine. It is going on for a while. Before everything was fine.

[EnzoGomes]

yea same with Russian songs that i listen to, most was translated to english amd its horrible and almost understandable 

[MarkMatrix430]

Not working for me. Cleared the cache and I'm still getting Mandarin pinyin titles for Cantonese songs.

[cdiony]

As of now nothing has change. Can Spotify commit a tlmeline when this multilingual test can be reversed?

[Quez5]

It's now impossible to find the music or recognize which song is what. This change is completely not inspired from the native speakers' prospective. Strongly request to revert these updates otherwise will move the music subscription to other platforms since now Spotify is completely unusable.

[mochinichi]

Cleared my cache but it’s still the same. It’s 20 July already - your promised date of recovery!

I’d prefer if there was a switch to toggle this. I saw another post on the Spotify forums where American users (which I am not) were complaining about needing English titles. If we could choose our preferred languages/languages we want to see native titles in, that’d be the best of both worlds. To ignore the multilingual and/or Asian market would be a big mistake for Spotify and I, as well as many others, will not hesitate to jump ship. (E.g. I am a native English and Chinese speaker who reads Japanese, so I am ok with these songs titles being in their original languages. But if there’s a Korean song or something else, I am ok with their titles being translated to English.)

[1279020506]

chill bro they are not in the same time zone with us.

[mochinichi]

Actually, just to add on to my comment: I’d prefer to see songs with traditional Chinese titles in their original language. I’m sure Cantonese speakers feel the same.