But ‘wang’ does correspond to the Western, Christian ‘King’. ‘Wang’ also corresponds to any non-Western and non-Christian ‘King’. ‘Wang’ also corresponds to ‘king’ (small k), Prince, prince, Grand Duke, Duke, Tsar, Czar, Shah, Sultan, sovereign, or whatever title a ruling house uses. The context dictates the corresponding translation in its correct form. This rule is also generally true of European ruling houses. If one were to print out the full title of a European sovereign, it could take several pages; but the title is simply shortened to King or Queen or Prince, etc. There being two types of queens: Queen Sovereign and Queen Consort, both taking the title and address of ‘Queen’. The context dictates which queen the person is. There is no doubt that the translation of ‘wang’ to ‘king’ is correct, because the 2 words could be translated back and forth without the loss of meaning.

However, to translate ‘Guan Yin’ as the ‘Goddess of Mercy’ is totally incorrect. I have reversed translated ‘Goddess of Mercy’ and have never found a Chinese person who equated this term with ‘Guan Yin’. This term may be pretty standard to you, but not at all standard or known to the ordinary Chinese. Imagine telling a Roman Catholic that from today someone of another culture will call their Mary-Mother-of-God, ‘Goddess’, or to bestow such title on her. This culture may well have thought it was bestowing a compliment upon the Roman Catholic religion, but the Pope would definitely not allow such a ‘gift’. As to equating ‘Goddess’ to a Christian term, this is totally unacceptable, because there are no goddesses at all in the theology of Christianity or Judaism. A ‘goddess’ in the Western sense, is equated to a ‘goddess’ of the ancient Greek or Roman civilisation. A ‘goddess’ in the mythology of these cultures could and did breed with mortal men, somthing which is totally sacrilegious when compared with Guan Yin.

I do not know who first coined the term ‘Goddess of Mercy’ for Guan Yin, but it is not correct. If it were a mistranslation, then it is appropriate to put a correction to it. I cannot accept inaccurate translations. People who accept and propagate mistranslations across languages do not demonstrate any scholarly credibility or integrity. Mistranslations of languages cause misunderstanding, animosity and hatred among people of different cultures and histories. No doubt as historians you are fully aware of this; and if there are any lessons to be learnt from history, it is that we should stop and prevent these inaccuracies from spreading rather than propagate them.

It would be good to have other people’s knowledge of this posted here.