How does one present spoken dialogue as a secondary language to signed speech?
I was starting to leave a comment on this excellent question when I realized I had come up with a second question which was equally intriguing.
If you're writing a story where 95% of the communication is signed, and you decide that you're simply going to use quotes to indicate signed speech, with attributives ("Where are you going?" he signed. "To Venice!" she responded, exaggerating the gestures in her excitement.), what happens when the signers come across someone who speaks aloud?
How is spoken speech formatted as a secondary or cameo-use language to signed speech?
1 answer
I think it's less about which language is the main or secondary (or tertiary or...fourthary?) and more about differentiating between them (as I stated in my answer to the other question).
But broader than that, I think it would depend on the scene. Do the characters understand each other? Are they communicating entirely in the secondary language? If it's yes and yes, I would say do the whole thing in quotes. If it's a yes and no, I would denote the secondary language in italics. If it's two no's, you're writing a sitcom.
More thoughts:
Something I didn't address before was consistency. If you decorate your second language in italics in one place, then do an entire scene in that language using quotes, I think you will confuse your reader. So the real assessment is what makes the most sense for your scene (and I stick by my conditional statement above), but then also what will not be jarring or strange for the reader based on what else they have seen throughout the rest of your piece.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4817. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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