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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33425
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 **Write what people intended to say, not the sounds of the words.**

We don't write character accents phonetically (hopefully). We don't add every "um…" and pause that's used in normal speech. Instead we write what characters _meant_, not the individual phonems coming out of their mouths.

By extension, we don't need to hear that lizardmen lisp the letter S, and that werewolves have trouble with P and M because fangs don't allow their lips to close. Unless there is some specific comedy of errors because of a mispronunciation, or the accent makes them the butt of a joke, it's better to just write what they meant.

Speaking a different language is a bit of a leap, but really it is the same idea. It doesn't matter which language they use at any moment, they may be bilingual or working among others in a common language of borrowed words, what matters is what they intended to communicate. So just write what they meant.

When the POV is third-person limited, your MC will either understand what was said or not, as the plot dictates. The longer she hears a foreign language the more words she'll pick up, and the meaning will start to come across before she becomes a fluent speaker. You can show this by having her understand only a few words at first: "Stephanie… airlock… come!" It's not that someone is speaking to her in a pigeon language, it's that she is only picking up familiar words.

Characters in a bilingual environment will share words from both languages mid-sentence, and fluent speakers will be comfortable speaking in both languages, so consider it a skillset among your characters rather than a realworld detail you need to show the audience.

Original score: 3