: Re: My story is written in English, but is set in my home country. What language should I use for the dialogue? I'm an amateur writer from the Philippines. I am writing a novelette for an

@Megan928

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The purpose of nonfiction is to communicate information. The purpose of fiction is inducing particular emotional/mental states in the reader, although writers of fiction often intend it to be educational as well. If you're writing for a contest, you're probably aiming for creating the most favorable impression on the judges, so you should be considering how your choices affects that. You're not writing a foreign phrasebook, and the readers shouldn't have much trouble understanding that the English dialogue represents Tagalog speech. Writing dialogue in the local language and then translating breaks up the flow of the story, and reduces immersion, so that should be avoided unless you think that reducing immersion serves a narrative purpose. Whatever interaction a Filipino would have with the story as written in Tagalog, generally speaking evoking the same reaction in English speakers means having the story all in English.

Individuals words are a more complicated issue. There are going to be cases where there isn't a good translation of the word, and it's a judgment call as to whether to try to come up with a rough English equivalent, use the local term, or try some other strategy. There's also the question of what to consider "equivalent": if X has relationship Y to Filipino society, do you look for a word that Americans (or [insert nationality here]) would use to describe X, or do you look for a word that has relationship Y to American society?

Just as part of reading a new work means being introduced to new characters that one doesn't know at first, reading a work in a different cultures means being introduced to new terms that one doesn't know at first. Even in set in an English-speaking location, there could be new terms, such as a story set in Chicago introducing the L or explaining aldermen for people from a place with different political terms. So there's some leeway there, but don't go overboard.

If this were not for a contest, and instead something that you had more control over the presentation, such as hosting it on your own website, there would be more options, such as having the dialog be in English but hovering the mouse over it gives the Tagalog.

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