jiggit:

The reason I haven’t reblogged the Chinese Redbud Woman post is because the translation annoys me. The ‘紫荆’ in ‘紫荆侠’ is defined as ‘cercis’ in my go-to online dictionary, for which I will grant ‘Chinese redbud’, but the ‘侠’ in ‘紫荆侠’?

That doesn’t mean ‘woman’, that means ‘hero’.

More specifically, it is the same ‘侠’ as in wuxia. Whenever you see a person introduced as ‘[given name]-hero’ or ‘Hero-[given name]’ in wuxia, the ‘hero’ (or ‘pugilist’, or ‘martial hero’, or ‘knight’) is translated literally from ‘侠’.

But — and this is why it particularly annoyed me to see that translation — when the person in question is female, they’re usually called not ‘侠’ but ‘女侠’, which is ‘female hero’. As opposed to a plain, default hero, I guess. It annoys the crap out of me.

So. She’s calling herself Chinese Redbud Hero, not Chinese Redbud Woman, if you must use the literal translation. I’d call her Zijing Hero because Chinese Redbud is a mouthful and you could just add a note that ‘紫荆’ means ‘Chinese redbud’.