How to handle multiple languages

kilamangiro · May 20, 2011

Hi all,

My writing partner and I are finishing book 1 of a planned multi-book series.
Book 1 is set almost entirely in medieval England so that is all fine and only one language is spoken.

However it is planned that book 2 will be partly based in Spain and subsequent books will be based in other European countries.

1) Obviously when English speakers speak to each other there is no problem.

2) When two Spanish speakers speak to each other, should acknowledge that they are speaking in a foreign language, or just let the reader guess as much because their names are Raul and Sergio and they are in Zaragoza?

3) I will have English characters travelling to Spain without a word of Spanish. When people are speaking to them in Spanish should I a) write the dialogue in Spanish or b) say "X spoke and Y scratched his head"

It is a YA fantasy, but also sort of historical (alternate history) in that we are trying to play with as much realism as we can along with the supernatural elements we have added.
Is an option simply to ignore language barriers altogether? It seems a bit of a cop-out to me, but at this stage I wish I'd invented this world myself and given it a "common-tongue"

Thanks

aekap · May 20, 2011

Kage Baker's "In the Garden of Iden" deals with this issue (iirc) by giving the line in English, and then telling the reader (in the dialog tag) what language they're speaking. I think. (that one also takes place in Tudor-era England, and the MC and her friends are... well... they're pretending to be Spaniards.)

But this only works if your MC is meant to understand what is being said. If he isn't, I'd give the line in Spanish.

mickeyDs4 · May 21, 2011

In my second novel "Indiana Jones Never Mentioned This", my MC Veronica speaks three languages; Arabic, English and Hebrew. What I did when she was speaking something other than English I tagged the phrase and untilized the footnotes. For other easily understood phrases, I used the Chewbacca and R2-D2 method of translating. You get what they said by the response from the other characters. Hope that helps!

eventidepress · May 21, 2011

In the Book Thief, the characters are always speaking German, which they acknowledge by having a phrase or maybe a word or two in most of the dialogue in German, and then if necessary, after the quote, they restate the line in English (I'm explaining this funny, but if you read you'll see what I mean?)

froley · May 21, 2011

Whatever serves your story best! There are a couple of good examples above to point you in the right direction. Give the reader as much or as little information as you want!

Shady Lane · May 21, 2011

When I did ASL in Invincible Summer I had it in bold, in ASL word order, which worked since none of the signers in the book were fluent.

eyeblink · May 22, 2011

One method I've seen used a couple of times is to put any dialogue that's not in the "default" language in square brackets, e.g. "[Hello,]" he said.

In Christopher Priest's The Separation, the default is English, so all German dialogue is rendered this way. Adam Roberts's Yellow Blue Tibia reverses this: here the default language is Russian, so any dialogue in English (in an English-language novel) is in square brackets, which gives an ironic effect.

thebloodfiend · May 22, 2011

In A Step From Heaven, whenever the characters spoke in Korean, the dialog was shown without quotation marks and the English was shown with quotation marks.

I found it annoying, but to some, it was poetic. In The Animorphs, something similar to what eyeblink said is done. All the thought-speak is written like this: <...dialog...>.

chancerychislett · May 22, 2011

I think a mix of both would be best. Common phrases, like "hello," should just be italicized. If it's a large section, then you should explain.

How to handle multiple languages

kilamangiro

aekap

New kid, be gentle!

mickeyDs4

eventidepress

froley

Shady Lane

my name is hannah

eyeblink

Barbara says hi

thebloodfiend

Cory

chancerychislett

better at querying than writing...