The Translation Problem, or ‘Emperor’ is a weird and interesting word

As a secondary world fantasy author, I think a lot about the problem of translation and the meaning and etymology of words. Especially since Tolkien, basically all authors in our genre have theoretically considered themselves ‘translators’ — the people in the worlds we write about presumably don’t speak the language we are writing in, so all our writing is a kind of translation of their thoughts and words. The question, then, is how much should we translate? Does it break the fiction if we use certain words or phrases? (There’s a related question about very modern vs faux archaic language in historically inspired fantasy but I’m not going to get into that here).

Lets take a few examples I’ve struggled with. Direct loanwords like ‘vis-à-vis’ or ‘naïve’ that are still written with characters that don’t exist in standard English — do those imply the existence of French in this made up world? Or is the implication that I’m translating a loanword in that language to one in mine? How about words with clear real world etymologies that rely on context the invented world doesn’t have? Here I’m thinking about words like ‘sadist’, which references a specific real historical person in our world. Generally, seeing my work as translation has actually helped, as I can tell myself that even if the invented world wouldn’t have that world, I’m just trying to create a certain idea in the mind of my reader, like real translators do, and so can localise to a certain extent.

Another place where this is a little tricky is with titles, as they come with a lot of baggage in terms of etymology and context. And, well, I find that interesting and it’s led me to think a lot about the titles rulers should use in my invented worlds. One particularly interesting title, in connotation and etymology, is ‘emperor’ so I want to talk about for, idk, a long time.

So, what is an emperor? The obvious answer is they are someone who rules an empire. Interesting, though wrong, but let’s run with it. What, then, is an empire? A particularly circular answer, one might smugly give, is a state ruled by an emperor. Maybe it’s just the next step up from a kingdom — so an empire is a particularly large kingdom or one with kingdoms as constituent parts (a rare occurrence but, for example, the Kingdom of Bavaria existed within the German Empire). Another, perhaps more useful definition, rests on how we use the term ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’ today. Under that definition, an empire requires a ‘core’ ruling population (whose land is called the ‘metropole’) and a number of subject populations, whose lands are colonies of the metropole. The empire is then named after the ruling population. The early modern European empires, like the British and French, are all examples of this. An empire, under that definition, is a multi-ethnic state in which one group rules the other groups.

And yes, that is how we use the term ‘empire’ today. But those empires — the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, and so long — weren’t ruled by emperors (except when they were, which I’ll get into later). So the term ‘emperor’ as a title seems somewhat detached from the ‘empire’ as a we tend to think of it today.

Maybe we can learn more about what an emperor is if we go back to look and the history and context behind the term. So, what’s that then? Well, it all starts with the Romans. According to their mythological history, Rome was ruled by a succession of kings until they were overthrown and the republic established. Except, they didn’t speak English so those weren’t the terms they used. The Roman ‘kings’, as we call them, were called ‘rex’ in Latin. And that’s important. That specific word ‘rex’, then, developed negative connotations to the Romans, as it was the word they used to refer to a group of people who, in their stories, were dictatorial tyrants (two words that didn’t have negative connotations until later, but I digress).

The Romans used the word ‘rex’ exclusively, after that, to refer to foreign rulers, including the rulers of the various Celtic tribes they encountered. That, btw, is why we call those people kings — it’s a direct translation of the Latin, even though those rulers didn’t have any of the trappings we associate with royalty today. Many lacked hereditary succession, for example, or the majesty of royalty. That’s also why we call Boudica ‘Queen Boudica’ — she was the wife of the ‘rex’ of the Iceni. We translate his title as king and therefore call his wife ‘queen’, even though no such title existed at the time.

But, later, Rome got hereditary rulers back, starting with Augustus. To all intents and purposes, Augustus was the first ‘rex’ of a newly established line of Roman kings. But he couldn’t call himself that — it would have been very impolitic given the Roman associations with the word ‘rex’. Julius Caesar had been killed largely because of the fear he wanted to be another ‘rex’, so that just wouldn’t do at all. In fact, the cunning Augustus never held an official position of rulership (unlike Julius Caesar, with his appointment as dictator for life). Augustus’ rule was de facto but never de jure, and officially the republic continued under his rule: a system that was maintained for centuries. All because Augustus was politically astute enough not to grab power officially, as Julius Caesar had, nor to use that term ‘rex’, with all its baggage, to describe himself.

But they had to call him something, right? Well, the Senate voted Augustus a series of honorifics that were somewhere between name and title until, by the time his reign was well established, he was called ‘Imperator Caesar Augustus’. Now, none of that is the name he was born with, which was Gaius Octavius (Gaius being his personal name and Octavius his family name). So, let’s take that later name apart. ‘Caesar’ is obvious — Augustus was adopted by Julius Caesar and took on his family name in place of his original family name of Octavius. By using Caesar’s name, he emphasised the link between them. ‘Augustus’ is the name he is now most known by and is basically an honorific with some kind of religious connotations. Finally ‘Imperator’ is a term that basically means ‘commander’ and related to the power of imperium: the power to command legions (which was usually reserved for consuls, governors, and legates, but was granted to Augustus, and his successors, for life as one of the few ways his de facto authority was officially recognised).

The Roman Emperors, as we call them, who came after Augustus continued to use these honorific titles/names. Imperator, to show their command of the Roman armies. Caesar, to show their connection to the previous Roman Emperors (even though they often weren’t related at all). And Augustus, to show their religious authority. When the empire finally got official titles under the Tetrarchy system of governance, it was decided that Rome would be ruled by two senior emperors, titled as ‘August’, and two junior emperors, titled as ‘Caesar’. By that time, then, we can clearly see that these terms have become the titles of Rome’s rulers.

Today, the word ‘emperor’ in almost all Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages comes from those terms. In the Romance languages and French-influenced English, the word is derived from ‘imperator’, giving us the English ‘emperor’, French ‘empereur’, and Italian ‘imperatore’. The German word is ‘kaiser’ and in other Germanic languages it’s some variant of that, like the Dutch ‘keizer’ and Swedish ‘kejsare’. Those don’t look directly related but you have to remember that in classical Latin, ‘Caesar’ was pronounced with a hard ‘c’ and a vowel more like ‘aye’ than ‘ee’, making the German ‘kaiser’ sound closer to the classical Latin ‘Caesar’ than the way we pronounce the word in English today. The Slavic terms, like the Russian Czar/Tsar, are also derived from Caesar, with the first vowel removed, presumably due to a shortening over time.

And that’s all really important. Because the modern European words for emperor aren’t just derived from Latin in terms of base meaning but also in terms of contextual meaning. These words didn’t originally just mean ‘ruler of an empire’, they specifically meant ‘ruler of Rome’. Still in the late Roman Empire and even after it’s fall in the Migration Era, Latin was widely used due to Christianity and ‘rex’ was still used to mean ‘ruler of not-Rome’ with terms like imperator and caesar used to mean ‘ruler of Rome’.

After the fall of Rome, the only European ruler to still style himself as an emperor was the Byzantine Emperor, AKA Eastern Roman Emperor (though they actually used the Greek term basileus, as the official language of that empire, which has a whole other meaning and etymology). That is, until Charlemagne was crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor — again specifically tying the title to the rulership of Rome. After that, the Holy Roman Emperors were the Catholics who claimed to be the successors to Rome and the Byzantine Emperors were the Orthodox Christians who claimed the same. Again, for emphasis, when someone was called ‘emperor’, ‘of Rome’ was implied to come after it.

When the Byzantine Empire fell, the Russian rulers started to style themselves as emperors, arguing that they were the next successors of the Roman title. Once more, that emperor really means ‘ruler of Rome’ or, by this point, ‘successor of Rome’ was baked into how the title was understood and employed.

So when did that all end? Would you believe me if I told you it continued all throughout the medieval and much of the early modern era, only ending in 1804? It’s true. When Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French, he was explicitly replicating Augustus. France, like Rome, had overthrown their kings in favour of a republic and were now going back to autocratic rule once more. But, like Augustus, Napoleon wanted to say that he would be an enlightened ruler for the people, not a despot like the old rulers, in order to solidify his rule. So, he took on Augustus’ title of ‘emperor’ instead of reverting to the old monarchical title. In doing so, he was clearly channelling Augustus, but he was not claiming that his new empire literally was the modern incarnation of Rome (unlike the Holy Roman Emperors and Russian Emperors, both of whom did exactly that).

That was the event that finally severed the link in the mind of European monarchs between the word ‘emperor’ and Rome. When Napoleon carved up the Holy Roman Empire into puppet states, the last Holy Roman Emperor abdicated and abolished the title in 1806. But, not wanting to suffer the indignity of a demotion, he declared himself Emperor of Austria. So now Europe had two emperors who claimed no real descent from Rome.

After that, every European monarch wanted to be an emperor. When Germany was unified, its ruler was declared an Emperor in 1871. Britain, not wanting to be outdone, decided to usurp the Mughal imperial title and declared Victoria Empress of India in 1877, a title the British monarchs retained until Indian independence. Even Mussolini decided the King of Italy ought really be an emperor, so declared Victor Emmanuel ‘Emperor of Ethiopia’ after he conquered that last bastion against colonialism in 1936.

So, in the 19th century and beyond, the connection between Rome and the title of ‘emperor’ was broken. But, before that, they were intrinsically linked. Which I just think is really interesting and shows how words, including titles, are much more than their base meaning. But the word emperor is also used in another way: it’s used in translation of the titles of non-European rulers. Those rulers of course have titles in their own languages that have their own interesting etymologies and, furthermore, it’s interesting to see when we translate titles as ‘emperor’ and when not.

Starting close to Europe, Arabic doesn’t really have a word for ‘emperor’. There is the term Caliph, but that title literally means successor, i.e. the successor of the prophet. It’s a title indicating both temporal and spiritual authority over the entire Muslim community, an entirely different concept. The most common title for independent Muslim rulers in the MENA region is ‘sultan’, which is usually left untranslated, the same as other Arabic titles like ‘emir’ and ‘sheik’. I think this is probably because, being so close to Europe, the European rulers got used to these other titles and just adopted them effectively as loanwords rather than translating them.

The Ottomans are a particularly interesting case. First of all, because Turkish isn’t Arabic (shocking, I know), but their rulers took the Arabic title sultan. And, while their rulers were usually still just called by that title in Europe, rather than a translation, their state was always called an empire. Partially that was due to its size, but also partially because the Ottomans claimed descent from Rome — derived from their takeover of the lands of the Byzantine Empire (which is why the meme answer to the question ‘when did the Roman Empire fall’ is 1922). But additionally, the Ottoman rulers claimed the title of Caliph (the last Sunni rulers to do so), though they weren’t generally called by that title day-to-day. So they were a Turkish speaking empire that used mostly Arabic titles, none of which we translate, but also saw themselves as the successors to Rome, and thereby implicitly as emperors as Europe would understand it, as well as the successors to the earlier Caliphates.

A little further out from Europe, but still in the Islamic world, is Iran. Now, empires have been coming out of that region since, well, for a very long time. The general term for a ruler in Farsi is ‘shah’ but there are also a couple of modifications of that term that have been employed by Iranian rulers like ‘shahanshah’ and ‘padishah’. More modern Iranian rulers are generally just called ‘shah’ in English — so those of the last few dynasties. But early rulers of Iran, like Cyrus the Great, usually have their title translated into English as ‘emperor’. Why is that? No, I’m genuinely asking: I have absolutely no idea. Maybe because western Europeans first learnt about those early Iranian empires through the Greeks and Romans, who did translate the title, and so they translated the translation?

Anyway, those other modified versions of the title are also interesting. Shahanshah just means ‘shah of shahs’, ie ‘ruler of rulers’ but is often translated as ‘king of kings’. The title wasn’t just applied to rulers but also to the Zoroastrian god and, from there, was later applied to god in the Jewish and Christian tradition. So that’s why Jesus is called the ‘king of kings’. ‘Padishah’ means something like ‘great ruler’ and, given the influence of Farsi across the Islamic world, would go on to influence other more superlative titles. And, of course, Frank Herbert, who called the rulers of the galaxy in Dune the Padishah Emperors.

Continuing on east, India also has an interesting history with their words for rulers. The general term is ‘raja’, usually translated as ‘king’. But India went through somewhat of a title inflation, in which rulers began styling themselves as ‘maharaja’ (great ruler) in place of the more mundane title. Maharaja could be translated as emperor, as it’s fundamentally a very similar concept to the Farsi padishah, but it usually isn’t, I think because it was eventually adopted even by people who ruled over frankly quite small domains. This created the slightly odd situation that in the 19th and 20th centuries, semi-autonomous Indian rulers under the British Raj were still styling themselves as maharaja even though in English they often had their title translated as ‘prince’ — perhaps so that their titles wouldn’t look like they equalled that of the British rulers, who were styled as King of the [UK] and Emperor of India. In the early modern period, India was ruled primarily by a succession of Islamic dynasties who often used Arabic or Farsi titles. The Mughal emperors, for example, were most commonly styled with the Farsi ‘shahanshah’ we’ve already discussed (and that’s the title that Queen Victoria was technically claiming, translated to ‘emperor/empress’, when she was declared Empress of India).

Okay, I won’t do many more of these, but I will just briefly and finally look at East Asia. Japan is the only country today whose head of state has their title translated into English as ‘emperor’, though Japan itself is officially called the ‘State of Japan’ as calling it an empire would have, well, certain connotations. But what does the title actually mean in Japanese? Well, it comes from a completely different tradition, influenced by that of China. The Japanese word is ‘tenno’, though that word is only used for the Japanese emperor (foreign rulers of equivalent rank being given a different title), and means something like ‘heavenly ruler’ or ‘ruler of heaven’. It has a completely different origin and contextual meaning, reinforcing the role of the emperor in Japanese religious practices and their unique place as the current head of an age old dynasty that, according to tradition, goes back to the gods, making the emperor semi-divine.

China also had a tradition — from which the Japanese one was derived — of calling the emperor the ‘son of heaven’ (‘tianzi’), but the actual title of emperor is ‘huangdi’. This was invented by the first Chinese emperor, combining two existing titles into a more superlative one. Like with the Japanese title, these come from a completely different cultural context to that found in Indian and the Islamic world (all of which were influenced by Farsi to create these superlative titles ‘king of kings’ and ‘great king’ equivalents) and that found in Europe, within which almost all words for emperor are derived from the Roman titles.

As I said, I’ll stop explaining words for emperor here. But I hope I’ve shown that these titles can have very different origins and contextual meanings. Certain connotations — relating to religion, culture, and history — are completely lost through the process of translation.

And that brings me back to the problem of translation in fantasy fiction. The titles rulers use presumably have their own histories and contexts in our worlds, which is difficult to ‘translate’ by just writing in English. Difficult, but not completely impossible, and I’ve tried to keep this problem in mind when deciding what rulers are called in my invented worlds. I’ll explain using the example of Teua, the world within which most of my fiction is set.

So, starting in the north — the more European inspired region — there’s actually a tradition a little similar to the historical European one. The first and greatest empire in the region was called the Holy Dominion of Eynas Reito and was led by High King Hjorrhard. When he died, his realm split into three successor states led by his brother and two sons. Each of them styled themselves as kings and, since then, royalty has been implicitly connected to the Holy Dominion. To call oneself a king in that region is to say that one is equivalent to the Holy Dominion successor states and thereby is to claim some of the prestige of the Dominion. The title of high king is even more prestigious — a title that had only ever been used by Hjorrhard himself. It was hence considered an outrage by many when, after its unification, the Vascasians began to title their ruler High King of Vascasia. They claimed spiritual descent from the Holy Dominion but, to the still existing successor states like Idnedia, the Vascasians had no right to use such a title.

On the Gulf Islands, inspired by Italy and Greece primarily, especially during their city-state periods, I wanted a different title. I liked the idea that they would use one title for their own rulers — with connotations of nobility and just rule — and another for other rulers — with connotations of barbarism and despotism. So, I style their rulers as ‘prince’. However, Islander princes are still considered royal and equivalent in rank to northern kings.

A particular problem was central Teua Major, the more Middle East and North African inspired region. Their Veqwadite religion has as a core tenet the idea that all land is god’s and, therefore, cannot be owned. This is in part because the religion began during a period of social upheaval and grew amongst the rural poor who were materially harmed by the attempts to carve up land into private estates. But, when the religion was accepted across society, this presented a problem. How does one create an economy and society in which land ownership is sacrilege? A new generation of Veqwadite thinkers came up with a solution: the sovereign/ruler of the land was conceptualised as its steward on behalf of god. No land is owned, but the sovereign can effectively lease it to individuals or communities, creating freeholds. This both centralised power, by giving the sovereign ultimate authority over all land, and solved this religious conundrum. That religious role of the sovereign is critically important in Veqwadite lands and has important ramifications outside of pure spirituality as well (as, for example, the state primarily funds itself through a land tax, or rent, paid to the ruler by those he has granted a freehold to). And only some rulers are understood as having this sovereign-steward role. Other, less important sovereigns, may be de facto in control of their lands but officially recognise the supremacy of a sovereign-steward over them, who theoretically allows them to administer their land.

But how to title all of these people? I considered just calling the sovereign-steward title ‘emperor’ or ‘sovereign’ but that didn’t quite get it across. In the end, I decided to invent a title because nothing else really made sense to me — the only invented title in my world. That title is ‘sahan’, intentionally designed to look a bit like the Farsi word ‘shah’. And those lesser rulers? For them, I settled on the titling them ‘satrap’, a real Farsi title that I thought was the best way to get across a semi-or-fully-autonomous governor who officially recognises the authority of a higher ruler.

Another region that was difficult to come up with titles for was Teua Minor, the sub-Saharan African inspired region. So, this continent is split into 24 provinces at present, 20 of which constitute Asynuk Nabkuun, AKA the Nabkai Empire, with the other four making up the Hustasi Confederacy. Asynuk Nabkuun is a very loosely ruled empire of these semi-autonomous provinces ruled over by a man who across much of the empire is really more figurehead than actual ruler. He is considered a living god and the entire continent is believed to be his domain, but his actual authority extends only to the core provinces. The others are closer to allies or tributaries than actual subjects, though recognise his divinity. Again, I started with just calling this figure the emperor, but that didn’t get across the cultural context. However, this time, I didn’t invent an entirely new world but instead came up with the title ‘divine-emperor’ to get across the idea that he is both ruler and living god.

The next question was what the call the rulers of those semi-autonomous provinces within the empire. King and prince made some sense, but ultimately I settled on the more generic term ‘lord’ (and, in the more directly ruled provinces, ‘lord-governor’) so I could create a distinction between the rulers of provinces in the empire and those outside of it, who I call kings. Hence, the Hustasi Confederacy, which is effectively an alliance of four provinces that broke away from the empire during a civil war over the throne, do style their four provincial rulers as ‘kings’.

I’ll just discuss one more, and it was one of the hardest. In Haratia, the western continent, there are three islands just to the east. One, the southernmost, called Duaguay, has a lot of inspirations from across maritime southeast Asia, especially the Philippines and Indonesia. This island was previously split into lots of small states based around a town or city, usually along the coast. Here, I took a lot of inspiration from pre-colonial Philippines with its ‘barangays’ as the primary political unit. However, sometimes these smaller polities would confederate, usually temporarily, to deal with large collective threats. More recently, the island has been unified through a combination of diplomacy and force into a permanent state, rather than temporary confederacy. But what to call all these rulers and their polities?

For the individual polities, I thought that a simple existing term like ‘city-state’ would do best, even though some of these would really be ‘town-states’ or even ‘village-states’. City-state is already the accepted translation of the Greek term ‘polis’, which is a reasonably similar concept in the Archaic Period. But who should rule them? I thought of the term ‘lord’, but I wanted these city-states to be ruled less by a single person and more by a wider family, of which one would hold a preeminent position. And what would I call the family if the ruler was called a ‘lord’? I couldn’t think of anything I liked. So, in the end, I decided those rulers would be called kings and the wider ruling families would be called ‘royal clans’. However, to get across the small realms of these kings, I modified the title to ‘petty kings’ — a term used by historians to refer to those with the title of king but who rule over small areas, and which I had already employed as an actual title to refer to the sub-rulers in the Kingdom of Vascasia.

But if the lower level leaders are petty kings, then what to call the rulers of the entire island? High king was my first thought, but I already used that rather unique title in northern Teua Major. Great king might have worked, but seemed to similar. I decided to call the state covering the whole island an ‘empire’ so perhaps the word ‘emperor’ would do, but I wanted a more specific term that explained exactly what being an ‘emperor’ meant to the people of this island. Eventually, I settled on the term ‘King of Kings’. With the individual petty kings already being less an absolute ruler and more just the head of a wider royal clan, I liked the idea that they would conceptualise the king of kings in a similar way — not the absolute ruler of the island but more the head of the collective clan that is all of the city-state petty kings. Hence I have the Duanguayan Empire ruled by its king of kings, split into city-states ruled by petty kings.

So, that’s some of the thought process that went into why I use certain words to refer to certain rulers in this world, in an attempt to capture some of the cultural and political context that is flattened inevitably during translation. I hope this little (actually stupidly long) piece was interesting, both in showing the context behind these terms in our world, and how I use that to think about the context behind equivalent terms in invented worlds. And I hope it might help you do the same — find the right titles, or words generally, for the concept you’re trying to get across in your own worldbuilding.