Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36967
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It sounds like you have some specific examples in mind where the whole point of the exchange _is_ the language barrier. It could be an opportunity to trigger empathy in the reader, either as the bilingual or the monolingual who misses part of the conversation.

I live in a cosmopolitan city. Half the writing I encounter in a daily commute is in an alphabet I cannot read. I do not feel threatened by it, and it seems more authentic (to me) to allow the characters to communicate as they themselves "see" the communication. If I can't read it, yeah I feel a little stupid like there is something I am missing, and I wish I could read everything with full fluency – but that's not the world I live in, and sounds like that's not the world your characters live in either.

It's the age of Unicode. People are communicating in emoji. Yes, you should feely use all the alphabets that are available to us in this amazing time of instant and flexible (and bizarre) communication. Based on some of your examples, it seems the subject matter is self-evident of what lingual-separation means. It's a part of your story. Use the alphabet as a story mechanic, to reflect the situation.

We don't write dialog phonetically, unless it's about the sounds a person hears without understanding the words. When people speak with an accent, we don't write each word phonetically in their accent, we write what they intended to say, or whatever gets the meaning across in the _least_ distracting way. You can probably search for styleguides that combine alphabets, but I suggest you decide on your own rule and stick with it throughout the story. Whatever you decide the reader will adapt, just be consistent.

My suggestion is to not explain _everything_ to the reader. Sometimes when romance languages are done in italics it becomes cloying and condescending – the conversation is being dumbed down for the reader, not the other characters. I can get meaning from context if the emotional situation is clear.

Original score: 1