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Well, whatever you do, don't convolute the the sentences around those words. Voices don't greet. People greet. "Konnichiwa!" greeted a voice. is grating and unnatural. There are at least four thi...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2020-01-03T20:41:51Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25393 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:46:19Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25393 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:46:19Z (about 5 years ago)
Well, whatever you do, don't convolute the the sentences around those words. Voices don't greet. People greet. `"Konnichiwa!" greeted a voice.` is grating and unnatural. There are at least four things you can do that will not sound artificial and grating: 1. Just use the word. People can deduce the meaning from context or look it up if they don't get it. `"Konnichiwa!" a voice said.` 2. Translate the word and tell us what the original language was: `"Hello" a voice said in Japanese.` 3. Establish the use of formatting, such as italics, as an indication of the use of Japanese. Then use the English word in italics for all Japanese conversation from then one: "_Hello!_" a voice said in Japanese. 4. Use the Japanese word and provide the translation: `"Konnichiwa!" a voice said. Konnichiwa is hello in Japanese.` You are telling a story and there is absolutely nothing wrong with explaining things like this to the reader occasionally. Obviously this does not work for extended conversations in the foreign languages. Only option 3 really works for that.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2016-11-29T16:13:28Z (about 8 years ago)
Original score: 2