Using A Different Language?

[chaoticfirefly]

What are your thoughts on using a separate language in your writing? Like, let's say your character comes from France, so their first language would more than likely be French, so they'd be speaking French, as an example.

 

[BleedingHeart]

Hmmm...I don't have many thoughts on this. One thought I do have is that sometimes people like to write down the foreign sentence and then immediately translate it in the next line, where sometimes it may not be appropriate. For instance if a French boy were to say something that turns out to be an arc word then it may be best not to translate it to English until later.
If you are dealing with a second language, that's coming up all the time, you may have to translate it the very next line. Many Americans don't speak French, after all, and you can't have an entire round of dialogue devoted to just that.
Just my thoughts.

 

[DCJazz]

If you MUST have a foreign language in a book targeted at English-reading audiences, do so very briefly with the actual dialogue. You can always write the whole 'began speaking in French' thing, and have a character translate it, assuming the main character can't speak French (if he can then I wouldn't bother with writing in the language at all; translating it into english would work so long as you specifically stated the man/woman was speaking French). It really depends on how you'd want to use it and whatnot.

 

[Rhamiel]

What are your thoughts on using a separate language in your writing? Like, let's say your character comes from France, so their first language would more than likely be French, so they'd be speaking French, as an example.

I recently read "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie
the main character is a french speaking detective, some lines of it say "the rest of the conversation was in french" and some lines were in french, like sentences and simple phrases, I understood most of it but some parts i was kinda lost on
over all i think she did a great job writting, the book is amazing and the little bits of french help add to the atmosphere of the book

 

[anaci]

The second book in my "Adventures of Sammy and Alistair" Christian short story series takes place in the Philippines, where there are hundreds of dialects. The main characters are from Alabama and Georgia, so to add to the cultural divide some of the locals only speak their native dialect (Cebuano) to them. Many Filipinos can actually speak English, so they won't be totally lost. But I choose to use the dialect in some spots so that it helps the reader feel just as out-of-place as the characters do! I'm considering not even translating.