Introduction: This study aims to translate the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) into Chinese and to verify the reliability and validity of the scale in the mainland Chinese population. Methods: This study collected 283 participants from October 2023 to April 2024, including a general population group (n = 159) and a gambling disorder group (n = 124). We translated the Chinese SOGS (C-SOGS) in a standard localization process and examined the internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and content validity of the C-SOGS, and to refine the structure of the scale, we did an exploratory factor analysis of all the C-SOGS items. We also use cross-tabulation analyses and receiver operating characteristic curve to examine the structural validity of this scale. Results: The scale demonstrated high internal consistency (α = 0.97) and test–retest reliability (0.80). Exploratory factor analysis resulted in a two-dimensional solution accounting for 70.98% of the total variance: a first factor composed mainly of questions related to the problems and consequences caused by gambling and a second-factor encompassing questions about the sources of gambling funds. Its content validity was over 0.80 and 0.90 in Item-Content Validity Index and Scale-Content Validity Index, respectively. The C-SOGS demonstrated excellent classification accuracy with a false-positive rate of 0.10 when screening the gambling population among all participants. The Discriminant Power Coefficient (D prime) of the C-SOGS was 2.92. Conclusion: We localized SOGS to obtain C-SOGS. C-SOGS has two dimensions and demonstrates high reliability, validity, and classification accuracy.