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Topic : Re: Scenes with different languages spoken after translation So... imagine you have a story in your native language written down, with protagonists that speak this language and no problem at all, - selfpublishingguru.com

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I have seen some books where the solution used was to add a "In <language> in the original" editor footnote for each of those instances.
I wouldn't recommend that, though. There was a "distraction" factor for jumping from the story to the footnote, and it didn't seem worth, for a secondary character saying a few basic words in their own language.
I would simply have styled it in italics (or a different typography, if you prefer) and noted at the first occurrence that future text in italics/by were in that language.
As for flipping the language I think this will depend on the kind of book. There are some stories which are location agnostic. Such as some children adventures where it doesn't really matters (much) in which nominal country is the town where the protagonists live, as the reader will identify it with them as if it was in its own one (until when several books later, they happen to travel to <place>, breaking that).
On the other hand, for a normal story where the place is known to the reader (say, a character has just arrived to Berlin), I see no problem in a phrase like:

Poor Siegfried was standing around, listening to the foreigner saying in German "Ha, he will not understand what we are saying, that moron"

I added a small tip to convey the language used, which is not otherwise available after the translation, but I find the text fine. In fact, the main problem I have with this is that it doesn't seem realistic that a character called Siegfried would not understand German...


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