Translation or Context? Using Foreign Languages in Novels

 

One of my current projects is Not the Enemy, a story about a German American girl living in Illinois during World War I. For various reasons, I gave her a grandmother who refuses to speak English, but that raises a serious issue. Should I include her German dialogue in the story, and, if so, how can I make sure my readers understand it?

For this book, I decided that my protagonist would understand German but be just as stubborn about speaking English as her grandmother is about speaking German. So when Grossmutter says “Bitte bringen Du mir ene Tasse Tee,” Kate answers in English with “One cup of tea coming up.”¹ Although that doesn’t give my readers an exact translation of what Grossmutter said, it does give them the essence.

There are other ways of conveying foreign language dialogue to the reader, of course. At times, I simply use the English and mention that Grossmutter said it in German. This can also be a successful technique.

I have a critique partner who sets her books in Africa. Most of Celeste’s main characters are American or English, and some of the African characters have learned English in school or picked it up from the English-speaking people they associate with. But there are others who only speak African dialects. Although Celeste bases her locations on the real African countries where she worked as a missionary, she has chosen to fictionalize them by giving them different names and languages. Although she limits herself to English, she must clue the reader in that the original words are said in another language. In the series I am critiquing for her now, she has a character who knows enough languages to act as interpreter, so Hannah tells her English-speaking colleagues (and the reader as well) what is being said. Celeste makes it clear, however, that the words are being interpreted. For example, “Raymond told Hannah, ‘Tell the children that we aren’t going to hurt them.’ Nodding, Hannah used the children’s language to repeat what Raymond had said.” (That’s not an actual quote but gives you an idea of how Celeste does it.)

Then there is the use of foreign language phrases without any attempt to translate but yet in a context that makes them flow seamlessly with the story. I just finished reading When We Were Widows by Annette Chavez Macias. Her main characters are Mexican Americans, and the story is sprinkled with Mexican words and phrases. I remember very little of the Spanish I learned in my freshman year of high school, and I have no idea how to translate the phrases used by the characters. Still, there was enough context so that I could get the gist, or at least the tone, of the words. Yes, there were times when I wished I had the translation, but not knowing it didn’t frustrate me or interrupt the story. That’s the trick of writing that way, and it’s not easy to do.

This is not the first time I’ve faced the issue. My first middle-grade book, Desert Jewels, was about a half Japanese American girl living on the west coast during World War II. She spoke English and knew very little Japanese, but to make it realistic, I gave her an aunt and uncle who came from Japan and had never learned English. Unlike Kate’s grandmother in Not the Enemy, however, the aunt and uncle played a very minor role in the book and had children who could translate for my protagonist’s (and my readers’) benefit. Even so, I put some Japanese words and phrases in a glossary at the end of the book.

I wish I had remembered that when I wrote Not the Enemy. Although my beta readers got what they needed from my protagonist’s thoughts and the context clues I included, half of them suggested putting a glossary of German words and phrases at the back of the book. A very good suggestion, and one I should have thought of myself.

The main thing about using foreign languages in novels is to make sure you don’t slow down the story or frustrate your readers. And, of course, it should never be an excuse for showing off. Whether the language is translated or not, its use must be natural to the characters and the situation.

Using foreign languages in a novel should enhance the story. If they frustrate the reader or slow the story down, leave them out.

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¹ My German is pretty rusty, so I’m still working on making sure it is correct. If that phrase is wrong, it will be right by the time I finish my final draft.

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The 1917 photo at the top of this blog comes from the Chicago Daily News. It shows a group of children standing in front of a sign at Edison Park in Chicago. The sign reads, “DANGER!! TO PRO-GERMANS.—LOYAL AMERICANS WELCOME TO EDISON PARK.” The photo is in the public domain because of its age.

Looking Back at Old German Hymnals

 

As I looked at hymnals used during World War I, I was reminded how rusty my German is and how fast language changes.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I am currently working on a story about a German-Lutheran girl living in America during World War I. So when a friend offered to let me look at some old German hymnals that had belonged to her mother, I was thrilled.

I haven’t used my German much since I took two years in college, but I can usually get the sense of a written document with the help of a dictionary and Google’s translation program. For the most part, that was also true when I looked at the title pages of Bobbi’s mother’s books, even though some of the German words seem to have fallen out of use. And even though it took more time to translate pages written in the old German script, I mostly managed to do so without human assistance, as in the case of the one at the top of this post.¹

Then I cane across this one.

I had downloaded two charts showing the old German script and providing the modern-day equivalent for each letter (or two-character grouping such as ch). Unfortunately, it didn’t help much with this particular title page. Trying to match up the letters in the red word at the top with the script on my charts, my best guess was “Pans-Buch.” “Buch” is book, but “pans” made no sense.

Fortunately, I have human resources as well. My daughter minored in German in college and has kept up with it much better than I have. She has even read the German versions of the Harry Potter books.

So I admitted my failure and sent it off to her. Although several words puzzled her, she got the gist of it. Turns out that what I thought was a P was an H and what I thought was an s was a d, so the word translated to “Handbook.”

I’m a pretty self-sufficient person, and I don’t like to ask for help.

But sometimes it’s the only way to get it right.

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¹ The top five lines read, “Church-Songbook for Evangelical Lutheran Congregations unaltered Augsburg Confession.” Presumably it was written for those congregations that followed the unaltered Augsburg Confession, which is a doctrinal statement adopted in Augsburg, Germany in 1530.