: Re: The use of footnotes to translate foreign words in a novel I'm writing a fantasy novel and one of my characters speaks in English, but sometimes utters single words in an ancient dead language,

@Odierno164

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It All Depends on the POV.
I would use ZERO footnotes in a fictional novel. I think it may have been done, but I think it breaks the reader's reverie and immersion in the story. It is bad form. The same goes for translating in italics, it isn't clear that is a translation, especially if it doesn't happen often.
It all depends on the POV.
If this is the MC and we are privileged to his thoughts, then his thoughts can do the translate for us. But if we (readers) are following somebody else, we should not be privileged to any more information than that POV; and if she doesn't understand "sahu" or that she's been called a pig, then too bad for the reader, they don't get to either. She would understand she's been threatened and likely insulted, and that's enough.
If you are writing in omniscient mode, then the narrator knows what sahu means, and can mention it in prose. I think the literalness of an insult is not important to the reader's comprehension here, almost anything could be substituted for "pig," like "cockroach", "dumbass", etc, without changing the emotional impact at all.
For what it's worth, I also would not put it in all caps; See Manuscript Format for Novel Submission. Publisher's expect emphasis or stress in italics, and specifically do not like ALL CAPS.

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