Portraying different languages in the same text?

[Ireth]

I figured I'd ask this question sooner rather than later. The characters in my vampire WIP come from a variety of linguistic backgrounds, the most important being 13th-century Scottish Gaelic and 14th-century Middle English. The hero of the story speaks the latter, and a friend he will meet in a chapter or so speaks the former. The hero's Middle English is written out as plain modern English due to Translation Convention, but I'm not sure what to do about the Gaelic.

I'm not a linguist, so having long passages of dialogue written in Gaelic would be nigh impossible for me without a reliable translator's help (and probably a glossary for my readers). I use a smattering of Gaelic terms throughout the story (as well as my other books involving Fae), but they're not nearly so obtrusive as such dialogue. I've seen it in published works before, and having to go to the back of the book multiple times every few pages, or even multiple times per page in some instances, got a bit annoying. And something tells me that the trick I use for this issue when RPing (writing foreign language text like <this> and English [or the native language of the protagonists, if it isn't English] text like "this") wouldn't work in a published novel.

The late Brian Jacques used a different technique in his Castaways of the Flying Dutchman books; he simply wrote every single language out as English, probably because the main character is an omniglot. Terry Pratchett did this as well in Nation, between an English-speaking girl and an unspecified-foreign-language speaking boy (which got confusing when they weren't supposed to be able to understand one another despite both their dialogue being written in English).

Any suggestions on what I should do?

 

[JCFarnham]

I would do what you do for roleplaying. I can't tell you about house styles, but that's by far the easiest and least confusing way of getting across the idea that these characters are speaking different language.

The other way be to use a gaelic syntax and pepper dialogue with choice words, but as you said, do it too much and you have glossary issues. Eg, Firefly. I love the use of Chinese throughout the franchise but it's not explained anywhere (although you can be sure that it's a very badly rendered vulgarity )

So yeah, personally I'd go with <..> rather than my second way. Either can work, and both could fail. So just tread carefully and, which ever way you do it, listen to your beta readers.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Who's the POV character? If the POV character can't understand what another character is saying, then the reader shouldn't be able to either, in which case you can do this:

The dude said a bunch of gibberish that Bob didn't understand. It sounded like Gaelic, but Bob didn't speak more than a couple of words of it.

Or

"Cfwrryyghngn blrrenan crwth," said the dude.

If the POV character can understand it, then:

"What's up?" said Bob.
<I'm speaking in Gaelic so that the guards don't understand what I'm saying,> Jim said.

If it's not first- or third-person limited, then it depends entirely on whether you want the reader to understand what is being said when Gaelic is being spoken. If yes, put it in angle brackets. If no, just say "The dude said a bunch of gibberish in Gaelic."

One thing you probably don't want to do, even if it is somehow feasible, is to actually put Gaelic into the text in any substantial degree... unless you want the small percentage of your readers who actually speak Gaelic to be able to understand what's being said before the characters do

 

[Ireth]

The POV character is the one who speaks Middle English; it's in a 3rd-person limited perspective. The two characters don't understand each other at first, but over the course of about two years they gradually learn each other's language, aided heavily by another character who speaks both. The time difference between the two languages doesn't really matter here as much as it otherwise might, as two of the characters are vampires (the POV guy and the one who acts as a translator), and the third is a ghost. The bilingual one has had plenty of time to learn both languages, being 180 years old.

 

[Kit]

Eg, Firefly. I love the use of Chinese throughout the franchise but it's not explained anywhere (although you can be sure that it's a very badly rendered vulgarity )
.

I like it when they don't spoon-feed every little thing to us.

And yes, *badly* rendered vulgarities. My Tai Chi teacher cringed and shook her head painfully at the mention.

 

[RedMorningSky]

For my taste, I'd rather just be told in some way that the characters are speaking different languages in whatever way, but then have the conversations in English. If the author sprinkles in some bits of the language here and there that's good so I can really buy it's a different language, but I would not want to have to go back to a glossary and have to decode something.

 

[Chilari]

In one of the Discworld books, possibly Jingo, Terry Pratchett shows when Klatchian is being used by using a different font. There's a visual difference which gives the reader a clue, and sets the system up so later you can use it in contexts where it would otherwise be difficult to tell what language was being used.

 

[The Dark One]

My current WIP faces a similar problem. It's set in the C11 and features Saxons, Normans, Danes and Welsh. I've had to be slightly inventive to enable all relevant characters to believably understand each other (a Saxon monk who'd been enslaved for two years by Danes was a big help - and most from the ruling class spoke Norman french).

Other than that, I sprinkle real words here and there but never explain. The context ought to make it clear enough.