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!

[Wl6]

Spotify, please fix this..

[user-removed]

this also happens to Japanese songs and it’s ridiculous. i hate the fact that i have to read the English translation of the Japanese songs that are not even accurate.

[alenespo26]

Something similar seems to have happened already before, and they seemingly fixed it with a 3 months turnaround. Hopefully that won't be the case this time.

[Wl6]

I asked spotify and this is what rhey said. How can we approach this so they can revert back to what it is. 

 

[cdiony]

We can fix it by mass unsubscribe if they don’t. All my friends intend to jump to Apple if they don’t rectify within a month. Really an idiotic idea. 

in Chinese it is call 畫蛇添足。

The correct translation to English is DRAWING SNAKE WITH LEGS. In hanyu is HUA SHE TIAN ZU. 

Spotify will translate to SNAKE WITH LEGS 😝😬

[kryptonika]

Spotify, instead of expending resources on shipping long overdue projects like HiFi, why are you messing with something that has been working all along? Even if we run English as our OS/device language, it doesn't necessarily mean we can't read other languages. If we have songs with titles in other languages in our playlists, isn't it pretty safe to assume that we can actually read them? It's bordering condescending that Spotify just assumes we can read one and only one language.

Even if this is a pilot feature (if you can remotely call it that), give users the ability to turn this **bleep** off.

I am going to open a support ticket on this, and I suggest that we all do the same to raise awareness. I am not even sure if any moderators (or better yet, internal developers) are reading and acknowledging the problem at hand here. If it indeed takes another 3 months to reverse this, I as a long-time Premium user may just move on to the competition.

[MC0212]

same here. the app is not usable when the playlist is not readable. i cannot recognize my songs from the list. seriously considering unsubscribe if this is not fixed.

[dw9873]

Yes. Absolute deal breaker, can't even search for a song.  Leaving Spotify soon if not solved.

[dansleble]

This is so annoying, Spotify please change it back!

[Nizu水]

I have the same issue with my Japanese playlist started this morning . I listen to music in different languages and I want them to stay in their proper language titles since it’s impossible to recognize them this way! Please Spotify change this back. 

 

[lochlann3619]

+1 for this issue.

I believe Spotify is making a well-intentioned move to cater to listeners who want to listen to songs in a language other than their own.

The execution, meanwhile, sucks, as it exposes two points of neglect by the Spotify team:

1. The existence of bilingual (or even trilingual) people

Many people understand more than one language and regularly listen to songs in all those languages. These people do not want, nor do they need a translation feature for the languages they already understand. In fact, this feature makes Spotify borderline unusable for these people as they would now have to mentally translate the song titles back to its original language to know, without playing, what song it is. Assuming the user understands only the language set for their device then going on to translate song titles to that language would be an insult to some, and an annoyance to others.

2. The nuance of the Chinese language

If you want to roll out this feature, at least do it right.

Though the majority of the users of the Chinese language speak Mandarin and write Simplified Chinese, some do not.

As a Cantonese speaker, I have noticed that Cantonese songs titles are romanized to the Mandarin standard. This is downright disrespectful to Cantonese speakers.

Solutions (as so many others have pointed out):

A. Rollback this feature

B. Add an option to show song titles in their original language

I had come to love Spotify, but now I’m left wondering if Spotify actually cares about some of its users like me. Perhaps it would make no difference to Spotify if I switch to some of its competitors that actually care.

[gongjoshua]

Have a premium account, jumping ship and changing music streaming platforms if it continues to be this way.

[lamhonn]

Same problem here, this is just stupid... please fix this Spotify

[STommydx]

I will probably subscribe to other music streaming services if it continues to be like this. This is absolutely a deal-breaker. I subscribed to Spotify because some of the other streaming service was having the same problem. And there is no reason to continue the subscription if it behaves like that.

[Fruity111]

Makes spotify completely unusable.
Youtube did the same thing to video titles and never reverted.

I have no hope for spotify doing the same. Apple music here i come.

[Shinchanwu]

Same issue. I am going to unsubscribe the premium service. This is horrible 

[khyjessica]

Rollback this feature ASAP. I just checked Apple Music (I don’t pay for it) and it’s showing the same translation on the same songs. This is very odd and needs to change. I have no idea how to look for the right songs now. 

[kl-14]

+1 on this thread. It's super annoying that I don't even know what the song is anymore in my Playlist. Can't even search songs properly anymore since I don't know what random name Spotify would translate to.

A song name is short, unlike a paragraph.

A direct translation does not work because English will never get the contextual bit of the original title. A pinyin name doesn't work as some other users pointed out, are either wrong or not used for all Chinese speaking people. 

Can't see any benefit out of this, but all negatives. If you're doing such intrusive feature test, at least give people the option to opt out, then you know how much people like or dislike the feature. 

[kryptonika]

I contacted Support last night, but it was akin to talking to a brick wall. I spoke to two different representatives, and both of them didn't seem to understand (or care) what the issue was. I asked to escalate my ticket but I was promptedly shot down...

Anybody know how we can escalate this?

[slhx]

This is terrible I hate it and it completely screws up searching for your own songs AND searching for new songs. I don't recognise half the songs in my playlist now. When I contacted Spotify support they told me the same bullcrap about piloting a new feature. Whichever genius came up with this "feature" should be fired. At least give us the option of turning this dumb "feature" off so that people who appreciate referring to songs in their original language can do that.