Embedding foreign language in an (English) text

[Sir Vivor]

Has anyone seen this in a commercial book? Did it work for you, as a reader?

I'm playing with the idea of having some characters speak non-English in short bits of dialogue. I can think of a few ways to offer the translation to the reader.. just wondering whether this approach exists out there..?

 

[monsterchic]

I know I've seen it in books, but I can't remember which ones for examples. I'll think on it and might come back later. I've used foreign language in stories before, but never more than a sentence or two at a time. I think it can really add to the setting. Though if you're going to use it, maybe try to use basic words.

As for me as a reader, I'd like to see more foreign language in books, but careful. There's a very fine line between enough to be cool and too much. I remember a book that had a dialogue scene in Russian, maybe? And it was almost the entire conversation. I don't speak Russian, so I was confused.

Maybe offer the translation like this:

"Blah blah blah in foreign language," the man said.

Other character motioned for his team to run. "He's got a bomb!"
****

Basically just use your better judgement. Feel free to post a piece for us to critique, if you're up for it The critique section has helped me a lot with stuff like that.

 

[WarriorMouse]

I think I've seen it with Klingon in older Star Trek books.
I've seen it in other SF books (can't think of titles at the moment) and generally, *drum roll please*, the universal translator kicks in.

 

[monsterchic]

the universal translator kicks in.

Good ol' translator. That's the way I prefer to read things.

 

[Susan Boulton]

I have used both French and German sentences in my work, in all of them it was pretty obvious from the plot, what the characters were saying. You can write it in English and indicate that the characters are speaking in their own language. There are lots of work around you just need to get your thinking cap on.

 

[zmunkz]

I would keep it to a minimum... a sentence here or there, and certainly only when it can be translated (or the characters will immediately discuss how they have no idea what it means). This approach is fairly smooth. In the Harry Potter books you get a short line of latin here or there, say, particularly when it is on an old artifact. Even better if the foreign text can be set aside somehow (maybe just with italics).

In movies they can have one guy yammering in another language, and it tends to work ok, but in writing it is a different story... seeing a block of dialogue in another language will eject most people right out of a story. Getting a sense of how the words sound is not intuitive, and it can be very slow to parse unrecognized written text. Maybe better in those cases to handle it in exposition.

E.g., something like this:
The woman repeated the nonsensical phrase, her face reddening with frustration.

Works better than this:
"Nescio quis peregrinas linguas et haec stulta esse demonstrationem," the woman said, her face reddening with frustration.

 

[millymollymo]

I've seen/read: German, Russian, Spanish, Elvish, Polish, Dwarfish, Swedish, Klingon, Italian. More recently there's been a lot with Latin inclusions. But by far the most respected language use I've heard of the mixed use of language: Belter Creole in Expanse or lang Belta as per the books of the series.

 

[Mouse]

I've done Spanish, Polish and French. But it's only ever been short sentences, and yeah, works for me as a reader and a writer.

Oscar Wilde uses lots of French in The Picture of Dorian Gray, if I remember rightly... not read it for a few years.

 

[tinkerdan]

This online Graphic novel::

The Hook : Page 1 | The Property of Hate
Has a character that speakes Morse Code(I think in clicks) and the context and other character comments make it easy to figure out; however it's rather fun to decode it and see how close it is to what you think.

 

[CTRandall]

Lumens started a thread about whether it ia necessary to understand everything in a book and several people mentioned invented words and languages in lots of books. For a biggy, consider elvish and dwarvish in Tolkein. As with most things, if the author has a solid reason and makes that clear to the reader, it can work well.

One way of dealing with it is to have a multilingual conversation. One character speaks English, a second character speaks something else and context makes the sense clear. Another option might be non-native speakers conversing in English with each mixing in bits of their mother tongues. When in Sweden, I once carried on a remarkably weird yet remarkably coherent discussion between myself and a German woman in which I managed a mix of German and Danish while she spoke a mix of German and Swedish. Don't know how, but it worked.

 

[Phyrebrat]

French, Latin and pidgin. But sparingly.

So many of our words come from French or Latin that it’s often easy for the reader to infer meaning.

For example ‘diabolis’ is obviously something to do with The Devil.

pH

 

[scarpelius]

I've mixed foreign language in a text and it was ok, it won a special award from the jury in a contest last summer.
I've made a character to slip italian words in his speech. Sometimes he corrected himself but not always. It was OK because italian is close to romanian. At the end of the story I've introduced two german robbers and made one character to roughly translate for the rest of the group.
If done well, the use of a foreign language will spice up the story.

 

[monsterchic]

Ooh, glad this thread came up in my notifications again. Read a piece the other day that did it something like this:

"Don't be stupid, baka," character x said.
"Oh, I'm a fool now, huh?" Character y said.

It worked for me.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I've used French, German and iirc Spanish or was it Latin... in my novels, and I always make it short and assume the reader can - or will - translate.

 

[caters]

I have never seen foreign languages in fiction except conlangs and I honestly wouldn't do it.

 

[thaddeus6th]

I've used a tiny smattering of French, German, and Latin in the 'serious' stuff I write. I actually got the idea from Vagrant Story, a fantastic videogame [whose graphics have aged terribly] from about 2000.