Titles in English

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Dohma
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Titles in English

Post by Dohma »

Hi, I'm wondering about titles like 'your highness', 'crown prince' and terms like 'imperial family', 'royal capital' and the like.
When do you have to capitalize them, if not always (or never)?

I only know the Dutch rules, where you only capitalize titles to show utmost respect in letters and such, but when I look on the internet for the English rules I see varying results.
Cthaeh
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Re: Titles in English

Post by Cthaeh »

Well I'd guess some of the translators who deal with these terms in their projects might know better than me, but I'll give my perspective as a native (American) English speaker. Your project is using BE as the standard, so hopefully there aren't differences that I'm not aware of.

I grabbed two different books from my shelf, and they each used a different standard for capitalizing. In the example, I'm going to use the one that feels more natural to me, but there's obviously different opinions on how it's done. That may be why you found conflicting standards in your internet search.

Spoiler for length
Spoiler! :
I'll start with the one I'm most confident about.

"Look towards the door. The young man who just walked through is Prince(1) Gil. He is the Mephius crowned prince(2)."

As in (1), titles that are used with (in front of) the person's name should be capitalized. When the term is referring to the position rather than person, or used to describe the person as in (2), then the term is not capitalized.

In the second book (the standard that I didn't like), (2) would likely be capitalized.

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I'm slightly less certain about the following rules.

"Welcome Your Majesty(3), it is an honor to entertain the king(4)."
--
"Come this way, Prince(5)."


When the terms are used to directly address the person in question, they should be capitalized as if they were a name, as in (3). (4) was left as lower case because the focus is on the position of king, rather than the person himself. So I would say the term "Your Majesty" would likely always be capitalized, because the only time it appears is as speech to address the king.

(5) is something that feels right to capitalize to me since it's a form of direct address, but the book that I agree with more (the first book) has that as a lower case. So you may want to use lower case if you want it to be based on a consistent external standard.

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This next example is where I could see it either way. But I'll put my preference (what 'feels' right to me).

The king(6) walked into the room and proceeded to his seat at the head of the table. At the farthest end of the table, two nobles started a whispered conversation.

"I can't believe the king(7) would make us wait this long."

"Truly, he is most unfit as a king(8)"


Here (6) in the narration, and (7) in the speech, are both referring to the specific person, but they are not used to address that person directly. I have a preference for lower case in this situation. However, you could argue that using lower case here is inconsistent with capitalizing (5) above. The first book I looked at would use lower case for (5), (6), and (7). The second book (the one I didn't prefer) would have all three of those capitalized. However, (8) should definitely be lower case, because it is referring to "a" king, rather than the specific person.

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For your other examples of 'imperial family' and 'royal capital'. I would say they should always be lower case. The one exception I would say is that if that the city is referred to only as "the Royal Capital," rather than a specific name. In that case it should be capitalized because "Royal Capital" is in effect the city's name (aka a proper noun).

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EDIT (May 6): I just happened to skim through some of a translation and saw that it capitalized the terms in some if not all of the cases that I used lower case. Maybe it's a matter of BE/AE. Well this conclusion somewhat invalidates my attempt to explain, but with the variety of styles it's probably best just to pick the one your most comfortable with.
Well I tried to point out where I was least certain. And if I got anything wrong, maybe that will motivate those who know more than me to correct it.
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Dohma
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Re: Titles in English

Post by Dohma »

The examples of your 'first book' feel most natural to me too. If I got it right it can be summarized like this:
Basically, when it's used to address a person or use the title in front of a name you capitalize the term (and you don't use an article either), but otherwise it's not necessary (and then it's usually when preceded with an article).

Thanks for looking this up for me! I'll probably copy some of your instructions into the project guidelines if you don't mind.
Cthaeh
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Re: Titles in English

Post by Cthaeh »

That is an accurate summary.

Though as I mentioned, my 'first book' might not capitalize (5). The line in that book that made me say that was "My princess, ..." (I forgot the rest of the sentence, but it was used to directly address the character). Capitalizing (5) was just something felt natural to me (and I was making up those examples, so they're not direct out-of-the-book examples).
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