Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Which language to use when writing a multinational story

In general, it's my opinion that a story should pick a language and stick to it. Even though many people speak multiple languages, having a book in more than one language means you're limiting your...

posted 12y ago by Neil‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:30:21Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6259
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T02:30:21Z (almost 5 years ago)
In general, it's my opinion that a story should pick a language and stick to it. Even though many people speak multiple languages, having a book in more than one language means you're limiting yourself to a subset of possible readers.

Ask yourself: What purpose does it serve to the story and characters to quote them speaking in more than one language? If a reader speaks (for example) English and Portuguese, there's no reason for them to see a translation immediately following. If they speak only one or the other, then they'll see text that makes little sense to them.

However, of course the characters _would_ be speaking in more than one language, and that should be conveyed. But there's no need to double up on the dialog; quoting the occasional word or phrase should be sufficient to get this across to the reader.

You can also add color by mentioning, from time to time, misunderstandings from accents and translation problems. You can even describe double meanings that result. (For example: "He said the word "misunderstanding", but in [language], that word also meant ‘sabatoge’”.)

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2012-08-25T20:39:42Z (about 12 years ago)
Original score: 5