yeah most of the online translation sites say it's empress but the thing is that it doesn't make much sense in context.
Empress: wife of the emperor, a rank lower than him Emperor: the one who rules a kingdom, (nearly) always a man Female emperor: a woman who rules a kingdom and is not the wife of the emperor a.k.a the highest position (Let's leave the rank of the empress dowager out)
yeah but what is 女帝? I'm not translating historical text so history doesn't make much difference, I'm translating Xianxia
Google Translate says "goddess", I don't know Chinese tho. Aren't those lofty females called something like that? Harem targets in xianxia, I mean
It's the exception that proves the rule. 皇帝, like pharaoh, is always understood to be male. Wu Zetian, arguably the only female holder of the 皇帝 title, was posthumously deemed illegitimate because she was both a woman and a usurper. She was omitted from the official Tang imperial chronicles. Hatshepsut, the only female pharaoh, suffered a worse fate--what the Romans would call "damnatio memoriae." She was also not acknowledged as a legitimate pharaoh. Both are now accorded their respective titles by modern scholars. The ancients themselves would never have done so. Simply put, 女帝 is like the modern title of Queen Regnant, which denotes a ruling queen. You can probably translate it as empress regnant or female emperor.
That's 女神. I would say 女帝 as just female empress. Like Wu Zetian? My dad says no one says 女帝 though. So idk.
Thanks for clarification - as I said, I don't know Chinese, so why exactly did I think it was a good idea to reply to this topic? Oh yeah, procrastinating...
If this was a world where it was more common for women to be in positions of power than men, then I'd say just "Empress". If not, I'd refer to her as "Empress Regnant" for the first mention, then just "Empress" later on.
I'd go with female emperor. The term empress is "皇后", and means something very different than what "女帝" would mean. The alternative is translating it to empress regnant, but it's not necessarily any more accurate than female emperor. I guess it depends on whether you want a translation that flows more easily in English or one which is more authentic to the original text.
The reason I even brought it up was because I first translated it into Female Emperor because it refers to the MC and authors usually go for the most bad ass shit they can think of in XianXia. I sort of didn't register it as an actual position but then I started reading and the first bitch antagonist HELD the actual position. It's the first chapter and so far there was no mention of her husband, which rebirth XianXia usually do (marry of the bitch™ to a super powerful person to show that she's not actually powerful she's riding on her hubbies coattails), but a Female Empror would mean that the antagonist got to her position by her own prowess (or the MC's.... since she did steal her ultra mega super duper powerful spirit roots when they were kids). It really makes a big diffrence which one I go by because being a Female Emperor says alot more about your power than being an Empress.
@cherryclan Rebirth of Most Powerful Female Sovereign When its cultivation story and 皇 already taken by emperor (or empress in this case since female mc) , 帝 is sovereign.
Bear in mind though that there are many different kinds of sovereigns: from princes for principalities, to kings for kingdoms, to emperors for empires, or sometimes even satraps. "女帝" explicitly refers to an emperor, so it may be useful for the translation to reflect that.