Comments on: Italicizing Non-English Words in English-Language Fiction

By: slhuang

slhuang — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 02:18:53 +0000

Ha! I’m not sure I have any good suggestions….you’ve given ME even more to consider!

By: Akaria Gale

Akaria Gale — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 04:12:12 +0000

You’ve given me a lot of food for thought here. I italicized words I made up even though the characters knew what the word meant. It seemed the right thing to do, but now, not so much? I also italicized words in foreign languages that no one speaks anymore (Latin, Sumerian, Akkadian). Is there a difference between italicizing the words in dialogue or narrative? So much to consider! I welcome your suggestions.

By: InMyBook

InMyBook — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:05:02 +0000

I think your intuition has been steering you in the right direction. As a reader, I do prefer it when authors italicize foreign communication, even if it is just a word. This is an interesting topic. Why does it feel right and improve the flow of the story? Even if I understand the foreign words, it feels appropriate to italicize them.

By: SL Huang (aka MathPencil)

SL Huang (aka MathPencil) — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 04:52:30 +0000

Oh, bunneh, it had nothing to do with that! Don’t worry your little paws. I’m glad you commented.

I think your point about single words versus lines of text is a good one, too. Single words in another language are more often meant to be in an unbroken flow with English words, and more often meant to be understood in context, I would suppose . . . versus lines of text where the reader really isn’t meant to get it at all . . .

*mulls more*

By: bunneh

bunneh — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 20:50:21 +0000

Hmm… is it a coincidence that this post comes the day after I made some comments about not liking long sentences of foreign language in a story? I don’t really want to start politicising my literary preferences, because my comments were meant purely on the artistic merit of including it. I often write about ancient foreign cultures (Greek, Egyptian), but I write for a readership that doesn’t understand those languages, so I don’t use them, other than a sprinkling here and there for flavour. I don’t italicise single words either, but if I ever quoted a line of foreign dialogue, I think I would.

EDIT: Actually, I did – when a foreign character swore a nice long meaty curse in his own language. I didn’t translate it because a) the POV character couldn’t understand it, and b) it was clear from the context that he was cursing. An exact understanding of the curse wasn’t necessary.

But although I’m trying to keep well out of the debate on ‘othering’, I fear I may just be treading my big stupid paws all over it again… *sigh*

*Goes to delete post*

*Hits ‘post comment’ button by accident*