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Topic : Re: How do authors incorporate languages they don't speak? In many, many English-language novels I've come across characters who speak other languages, most often French for whatever reason. In many - selfpublishingguru.com

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Hmm... Let's see how I can't be of help, shall we? Try this:

Read famous works that are translations from source materials in the language you want to add to your manuscript. See if there's a phrase that caught your eye and see what it looks like in the original work.
Look up common expressions and idioms in 'the foreign language' from websites that teach them (mostly dedicated for light travelers but should work). Use literal translations with those but be careful they don't have too obscure cultural concepts. Eg. It's not always obvious to a westerner that 'gifts/wrapped presents' take the place of flowers (as a consolation to families of/respect for) the deceased in some Eastern countries. (See 3.2)

That's what I can say on this;

But on adding the result to the MS, one should

Decide on the source language and the target script:

The script of the source language may differ significantly from that of the manuscript language. For example: Adding phrases in Devanagari script to text predominantly in Latin script.

If that's the case, decide on which you want: To transcribe the foreign phrases; To include them in the original script; or To transliterate them.

Transcribing the foreign phrase seems to be the best option. As including visually different scripts -different in direction of writing, in the general form of glyphs, or in type (2)- can be jarring and is discouraged.

Only use sounds found in the target script, don't add any (or too many, if you must have a few) sounds that the reader can't pronounce, even if the character is fluent in the source language. Similarly, don't use diacritics too much; aim for a maximum of 'Tolkien-level'.

See if the scripts (source and manuscript) differ significantly in type -one is an alphabet, the other an ideographic- and never, never, include the phrases in the source script.

In certain languages -especially Chinese/Japanese, from what I've seen- you may use phrases in a closely related or a very common script. Latin being the best example of an almost universal script that I've seen often used in non-mainstream Japanese works (manga, mostly).

Decide on what s/he wants to include of the foreign language, is it simply the fact that it is used by a character? Or do you want to reference the culture that comes with it?

To reference the culture of the language's home country, I'd imagine the best way to be through the narrative, not dialog. Through the characters' moves, hobbies and way of life.

But to reference the culture behind the language (we could consider Shakespeare/Rock'n'Roll/... to be 'culture behind English') then you can translate the idioms. Notice that you essentially bring the idioms along with the character and give them to a machine translator (not really, the point is to have a literal translation).

Don't overuse or misuse this. The reader will look up (or you will include through narration or dialog) what the translated idiom meant, but s/he'd hate to have to read then translate every sentence to his/her cultural concepts.

Eg.1 Arabic: "As if birds are on their heads." ** English: "They're walking on egg shells."
On Eg.1: In the previous example, both idioms could (but not always would) mean that a group of people are very silent, or very careful for some reason. Because of the desert-origin of the Arabic language, people would look out for birds, especially predators, and thus would fall silent when travelling so as to not scare the figurative birds. The English idiom I believe is fairly clear.
Eg.2 English: "Like hell you're gonna have this one!" ** Arabic: "The moon's closer to you than this!"
Eg.3 English: "Thank you, Mr. Obvious!" ** Arabic: "Like who struggles to describe water and ends up with... 'Water'!" OR "Like you found the lost gem!" (But in a sarcastic tone, I'm not sure I can capture that with an English word; an example of an idiom that will not work properly.)
Eg.4 English: "This's just the top of the iceberg." ** Arabic: "Greater is what's hidden."
Also notice how such expressions would differ from dialect to dialect. The Arabic idioms I used are usually seen in literary works, rarely in the 20+ regional dialects. The English idioms I used are quite common in films.

For quick translations of phrases in languages different from the manuscript language (but in a suitable script) then one can

include the translation in italics immediately following the line of dialog that needs it.
enclose the foreign phrases in quotation marks different in appearance to what the manuscript language uses.

Eg. Use " (double quotation marks) for English (here, MS l'g) and ‹ , › (angle quotation marks) for French, Arabic, or transcribed Chinese (here, possible foreign l'gs).

make sure the formatting is consistent.


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