: Re: A torrent of foreign terms I am writing a short story, about a particular field with multiple specific terms, none of which are in English. (Specifically, I'm writing about bullfighting, but

@Kevin153

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Realism is just a style --you're trying to give readers the feel and the flavor of this character, not give them an exact transcription of what his actual thoughts would be. That gives you several possible ways to attack this question:

Present him as though he was consciously addressing an audience unfamiliar with bullfighting, or in other words, as if he was telling this story to a representative of the probable readership.
Shift to 3rd person. This allows you to use his words but also to explain them.
Start with enough full immersion to give the feel and then rapidly transition to presenting it in a way your layperson audience will easily understand --with the implication that he's still using the proper terms, you're just not inflicting them on the audience. (This can be tricky --it used to be when authors did this they felt the need to explain it explicitly to the audience, as clunky as that is, but it's become enough of a convention that a lot of writers just skip the exposition and leave it implicit.)
Just sigh and write it in a way that will sound wrong to you, but right to the audience. Unless you're writing specifically for an audience of bullfighting aficionados, your primary responsibility is to your reader --and not to the imaginary panel of judges in your head who will chastise you for using the wrong words. Keep muleta as "muleta" and a sprinkling of other terms for flavor, and lose all the rest --without regrets.

Look at it this way --if you having an ordinary conversation with a friend who knew nothing about bullfighting, you wouldn't overwhelm him with specialized jargon you knew he wouldn't understand, would you? Hopefully not. You might drop a few technical terms into the conversation, but you'd explain them. Otherwise you'd come across as a know-it-all jerk who was more interested it being heard than understood. You owe your audience at least as much consideration.

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