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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...
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T01:08:52Z (about 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
ggambett
·
2019-12-08T01:08:52Z (about 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
System
·
2011-02-01T00:37:16Z (almost 14 years ago)
Original score: 10