English and other languages in the same fic

[Malloriel]

From what I've seen, my experience laying most heavily in the more high fantasy styled novels, the inclusion of another language is usually denoted by italicized text, whether in a small burst ("Sivven! You cannot simply rush out there! They'll slaughter you!") or in a more fleshed out bit of prose ("Niquenne donae li amon tu lin, na li emon aloure."). It serves as denotation to the reader that "don't worry, you aren't meant to understand the speech directly. It's meant to be Other Than English."

I experimented with using more than one language in a conversation, where one spoke the tongue, and the other understood, but responded in English. It was my hope that the actions and responses of the one who spoke English would keep the reader from getting lost in the exchange. I felt it necessary to include the other language, however, as it was in part being used as a sort of distancing and testing tool. As the character speaking the language wanted to distance the one whom he addressed, I wanted the reader to feel some of that distancing as well.

(For any who are curious: http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/46084-scion-of-darkness-an-excerpt.html )

As for multilingual books: The Dragon Quartet uses German without translation, which is fun if you have enough of a fundamental understanding to blunder your way through it, and Kushiel's Legacy and the Imriel Trilogy are set in a world where several different cultures interact with each other. I think Jacqueline Carey's approach to the various languages (all real world languages set in an alternate Earth) is effortless. I don't remember being pulled from the narrative at all by the sheer number of languages the characters came up against. We're talking French as a native (and being the main language, all written as English), Pictish English, Gaelic (I believe both Scottish and Irish), Spanish, German, Italian, Greek, Slavic, Hebrew, Persian, African dialects/possibly Egyptian, Romanian, . . . That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but there are articles that delve into what Ms. Carey employs and their real-world equivalents. Despite the number of languages, though, I still felt that I was a part of the narrative, so you might explore the methods she uses to incorporate the languages without alienating the reader.

 

[Toby Frost]

I don't think you could actually tell that joke to the reader, so as to make him laugh at the mix-up between the hotel and the monastery - after all, a joke ceases to work when it has to be explained. But you could certainly have a scene where a newcomer wonders why the monks look so amused at his grasp of Chinese. Again, as with everything in a well-written book, this could tell us more about the setting and the characters. Are the monks laughing, enraged, not terribly bothered, etc? How would the person making the pun, accidentally or otherwise, respond? All of this would be good world-building material.