: Re: I'm writing a prologue from the POV of a non-English-speaking character. How should I write the dialogue? Picturing this in movie form would be easy. I would have the character speak their native

@Megan928

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This has been touched on in other answers and comments, but I'd like to bring it out explicitly:
You don't have to do anything.
In fact, I'd argue you shouldn't do anything.
It's a general understanding when reading English books that in any given scene, "English" is the stand-in for "language the POV character speaks and understands". There are books - set in foreign countries or fantasy worlds - where there are zero English speakers at all, and yet all the dialogue remains in English. Nobody blinks at this, and you don't have to draw attention to it. Same for your situation: if we meet the prologue character in his setting as a POV character, there's no need to justify him not being able to communicate with another POV character later. Especially if the readers learned or could infer that his setting is one where English isn't in use. Language barriers! They happen!
(At the most, I'd suggest adding contextual clues if they're not already present in the prologue that we're not in an English-language setting. But these don't have to be excessive - if your character is called Vladimir Mikhailov and he's chatting with a Tatyana about when the flight from Yekaterinburg is going to get in, that is going to be more than enough for most readers. In fact, just the name alone is probably enough.)
On the flip side, explicitly drawing attention to the fact that they're not speaking English can violate your character's POV and alienate your readers from them. "He spoke in Russian" - this is fine if he's code-switching, but if the character is talking with other Russians, in a Russian-language setting, why would he even think that? How often do you go about thinking, "aha, I am going to speak to my friend in English now" if you're monolingual? Similarly, the suggestions about different typography, or even different grammar. Whenever you do this, you are basically forcing the story to say there is something special and unusual about something your POV character finds mundane (speaking his language). That doesn't mesh well and can lead to your readers distancing themselves from the character since you're making it clear that - unlike the English speakers - there is something weird about his perceptions. As someone who's multilingual myself, I have to admit seeing it in fiction bugs me every time.
TL;DR - just write the prologue dialogue in English. Your readers will figure it out.

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