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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/36966
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

For Latin-based languages, the foreign term may be expressed in italics. _Gracias._ However, what about non-Latin-based languages and non-alphabetic languages?

Okay, what if something happens, and the main character makes a comment with a Chinese idiom, 对牛弹琴? Or a character knows another character does not speak/understand Chinese and mutters, 畜生, insulting the other character in a language that the other character does not understand. Or perhaps, a mother says 小心肝 to her child. A character may be a second-language Mandarin speaker and, like other second-language speakers, the character has trouble with Chinese tones and sometimes the grammar, leading to misunderstandings. If the entire work is written in English but some dialogue has to be in Mandarin Chinese to illustrate the character's mistakes while speaking Chinese, then is it okay to just include Mandarin Chinese in the text?

Original score: 6