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Q&A How to handle foreign military ranks?

Suppose you have a character who has a rank in a foreign military - say, Feldwebel Hans. That's the equivalent of a Sergeant. On one hand, having people call him "Herr Feldwebel" gives some flavor...

5 answers  ·  posted 14y ago by ggambett‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question fiction language
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T01:08:52Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1266
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar ggambett‭ · 2019-12-08T01:08:52Z (almost 5 years ago)
Suppose you have a character who has a rank in a foreign military - say, Feldwebel Hans. That's the equivalent of a Sergeant.

On one hand, having people call him "Herr Feldwebel" gives some flavor and authenticity to the story, and I'd really like to do this. On the other hand, most readers won't know for sure what a Feldwebel is (I found out thanks to Wikipedia!) and what's his relationship to, say, an Oberst (Colonel) who berates him.

How would you handle this? I rather use the original names for flavor, but I can't figure a non-contrived way to explain the native language equivalent rank.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2011-02-01T00:37:16Z (almost 14 years ago)
Original score: 10