: Re: Can non-English-speaking characters use wordplay specific to English? Would it be jarring if in an original (non-translated) story, the characters, who don't speak English in-universe, use "untranslatable"

@Karen856

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I am from Spain, so I have a lot of experience reading books in one language (Spanish) where the characters were supposedly speaking in a different language (usually English). I can give you a reader's point of view, then.

If you are writing a story in English, aimed at English speakers, where the characters are supposedly speaking their own native language but their words magically appear as English to us readers (e.g. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha and mostly any Fiction work set in a non-English-speaking place), then you have two options:

Use non-English wordplays, translate them to English as literally as possible and leave a footnote explaining the actual meaning. This can remind the reader that they are looking at a different world and culture, and make them more engaged with your story.
I'll always remember when I was a teenager, reading a Spanish translation of "Hackers" by David Bischoff I came across the sentence "El semáforo se puso en verde. Verde significa dinero.", which didn't make much sense until I read the footnote explaining that US banknotes are green (Spanish banknotes back then had different colors). I liked learning that, and it reminded me that these people were not Spaniards, even if their words appeared as Spanish to me.
Use English wordplays, but cautiously and only for unimportant conversation. If you need some character to make a joke or show some wit, then cool, go ahead, let'em make a pun here and there, but be careful: if the pun uses some too-obviously-not-English elements, or if you use it for any kind of plot-advancing situation, for readers that know about your characters' culture it can break suspension of disbelief really fast.
I can't remember any actual of example for this, but imagine your characters were supposedly from Spain and so they were aptly named Juan, Ana, Ignacio and Lucas. And the plot depended somehow on their initials forming the word J-A-I-L... Well, how convenient that their Spanish names formed an English word! (/sarcasm).
Or maybe one of them is called "Irene" and you make a play on words with "seen"... but in Spanish "Irene" is pronounced "ee-REH-neh" not "eye-REEN".
Or they are making jokes about the Easter Bunny, when that is absolutely not a thing in Spain.
That kind of things can be picked up by your more savvy readers and kill the mood.

However, if you are writing a story with some parts in a non-English language, but still aimed at English speakers, then you only have one option:

Avoid English word plays if they don't make sense in the language you're using. As an English reader, chances are that I know the old "Why was six afraid of seven?" joke, but no matter how you translate the pun to Spanish (either "¡Porque siete ocho nueve!" or "¡Porque el siete se comió al nueve!" or even "¡Porque el siete hizo un bizcocho con el nueve!"), it's not gonna work. If your readers can read that foreign language, they will realize the joke makes no sense in that language; and if they can't read it... well, it wouldn't make a difference anyway so just don't do it. If your characters are using a different language, they must do so coherently.
A bad example for this is Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, when they realize "Speak friend and enter" is a play on words ("speak" can mean both "talk" and "say"). There's just a little problem: in Spanish, "speak" can only mean "talk"; we use a different verb for "say". So when I read "Habla amigo y entra" and then Frodo went "Hey, maybe 'Habla amigo' means that we must just say 'amigo' to enter", I was like "What? No, why would it mean that? It'd say 'Di amigo' not 'Habla amigo'. What's in that hobbit pipe-weed of yours?"

TL;DR

Non-English wordplays translated to English: OK
English wordplays in English: Sometimes OK, careful not to include out-of-place cultural references, do not use for plot-advancing either.
English wordplays translated to non-English: AVOID

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