Three books now run in the new translation: “The History of a Family”, “An Unfortunate Gathering” and “The Sensualists” — twenty-four chapters, made from the Russian original rather than from another translation.
Until now the Chinese text of the game was Geng Jizhi's translation from the 1940s. It is in the public domain, which is why it could ship with the game lawfully. But its style is archaic by today's standards, and Chinese readers said so — several of them took it for machine translation. It is not machine translation; it is eighty years old.
Its second chapter is called “Lizaveta the Stinking”. Geng titles it 麗薩魏達 — a transcription of one word, “Lizaveta”. The nickname is gone, though every other language in the game keeps it: die Stinkende, la puzzolente, la hedionda.
More than a word is lost. Smerdyakov takes his surname from his mother's nickname — the novel says so outright, and in Russian you hear it at once. In Geng the mother is 麗薩魏達 and the son is 司米爾加可夫: the two names share nothing, and a link that carries half the book simply does not exist for a Chinese reader. She is now 莉扎韦塔·斯梅尔佳夏娅 and he is 斯梅尔佳科夫, with the root 斯梅尔佳 standing in both.
The demo is the first two books, and all of it now runs in the new translation: you can read it and judge it without buying anything. Book III is in the full game.
It has not been removed or replaced. There is a switch in the settings: the new translation, or Geng Jizhi, 1947. From Book IV on, the old translation runs in any case — with the old names.
The developer is Russian and cannot judge for himself whether the new Chinese reads naturally or amounts to literature. If Chinese is your native language, read it and say what it is worth. The thread for that: https://steamcommunity.com/app/4955990/discussions/0/590687864233187080/