1. There is always no perfect solution when doing English translations. When do you use pinyin (e.g. Quanzhen, Qiantang River, Xihu) and when do you use literal translations (e.g. Ox Village, Dark Wind Demon, Westlake).
2. Also, I find that many parts of our translations here on spcnet would not lose to these licensed published versions in quality.
3. What? Ken cares about LOCH translations? Like the ones available since 10 years ago here but not read?
Its BIxie Jianfa Gawdammit you guys!!!!
I haven't read either the fan-translated or licensed translations, but when snippets of the fan-translated versions come up in discussions, I have noted serious deficiencies - e.g. important details are glossed over, or the wrong meaning of a Chinese character with multiple meanings is picked. One of the worst I remember was from ROCH, where the translator confused a dream with reality, got everything in the dream backwards, then fabricated a sentence wholesale later in order for it make sense.
Kudos to the translators for undertaking such a massive task, but some serious proofreading is in order!
It was something you brought up in a thread here: