Thai courtly vocabulary extends to all foreign monarchs in translation

Evidence

The aura of the Thai monarchy is such that I expected the translators to use the special ‘feudal’ vocabulary required when describing any activity by Thai kings present and past. What I did not expect was that the same special vocabulary was applied to all foreign monarchs as well, including such unlovely figures as London’s William the Conqueror, Paris’s François I, Vienna’s Franz II, Berlin’s Wilhelm II, and so on. When I objected that the entire spirit of IC is republican, and almost all monarchs are handled with irony or hostility, the objection was quickly brushed aside. ‘You don’t understand our traditions and our situation.’ With a mixture of laughter and apprehension I look forward to what may be taken as IC’s first ‘royalist’ translation! — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 818

Categorization

• SEED: Potential essay angle: how a nation’s linguistic deference grammar silently overrides an author’s political intent in translation.
• QUESTION: Why did Thai etiquette extend elevated vocabulary to all foreign rulers? A study of Thai honorific pragmatics could explain.