Talk:List of kingdoms in Twelve Kingdoms

King, emperor, queen, empress?

How should we refer to the position of Youko or Shushou? Queen or Empress is our first thought in English for a female ruler, but some might argue they have connotations of low power, or weakness, especially since they're more commonly used as the title of the consort of the real ruler. The Japanese term used is '-ou', ruler, which is gender neutral; it becomes 'queen' if the character for woman is added, but I'm told the author doesn't add it. I'd be somewhat inclined to refer to Youko as the king of Kei, with 'queen' held for someone like Shoukei's mother, wife of someone who became king. I think the Tokyopop translation went this route, calling Youko the Glory-King of Kei. (Of course, that was inappropriately translating the name of the kingdom of Kei; the straightforward translation of Kei-ou would be Kei King, or King Kei, or Royal Kei.) -- Mindstalk (talk) 20:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

That's a difficult subject. I for one find calling a female ruler a king rather disgusting. I prefer Emperor and Empress over King and Queen. However, I think you're right that Empress sounds like it may not be the ruler but just the wife of the ruler. Maybe we could go the same route as the author and just call them <country>-ou (Keiou, Enou, etc.)? There's already so many foreign terms used (like Taiho and all the names of the Taiho) that I don't think one more would hurt. --Eruhildo (talk) 03:35, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Transliterations, and the Tokyopop translation

I figured I should open this before we have more of an edit war. So, we have 'Yoko' from the Tokyopop translation -- which, while licensed, has been considered flawed by a bunch of people (and that's a general Tokyopop thing.) The licensed DVDs have 'Youko', as do some of the fan translators, such as Eugene Woodbury. (I was wrong to say all the fans have Youko; at least some of my fansubbed anime have 'Yoko'.) Eugene has an oblique comment here. JDIC gives the onyomi of her first character as 'you', though 'yo' is a nanori, name-reading. Listening to the anime, with the name being pronounced by actual Japanese people, it sounds more like 'you' ('yo-u') than 'yo', though I'm not an expert.

We've also had the issue of the funky royal titles (Glory-King, Ever-King, Naze-King) which were, shall we say, unique to the Tokyopop translation. -- Mindstalk (talk) 00:48, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Upon further looking into this, I see that AnimeWorks' website calls her "Youko". Not having seen the DVDs, I didn't know that's how they romanized it (and I thought the official site listed in the main article was the anime's website). Knowing that, I now say it should be "Youko" since the anime is most likely more popular. Plus I've never liked Tokyopop's translations - they make me gag. Let's change all those funky king titles back to emperor and empress. --Eruhildo (talk) 06:50, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

"Yoko" → "Youko" done. On second thought, the articles about the novels should keep "Yoko" since we only have the Tokyopop translations for those. The X-King titles have now confused me beyond all reason and I don't know what to change them to. *stupid tokyopop* --Eruhildo (talk) 07:05, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Cool, and thanks. BTW, I polled a JK community figuring some of them would be better listeners, and the general opinion is that yes, we hear a long o from the native speakers, and Youko is a better romanization (with alternatives: Yooko, Yohko, Yoko with a macron or circumflex (Yōko or Yôko)). But AIUI the hiragana form of her name maps directly to Yo-u-ko. You could use Yōko as a compromise for the novels if you want, sticking to their letters but indiciating a difference, but I'm comfortable with treating the Wiki rules as guidelines modified by common sense and reality in this case, with Tokyopop getting overridden by everyone with a clue. At the very least, if you stick with Yoko, then the novel articles should have a section on why they differ from the anime ones. -- Mindstalk (talk) 13:16, 18 November 2008 (UTC)