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jackI was recently rereading some of the Hornblower books, and I noticed that when he was talking to a French fisherman and asking in French about the progress of something-or-other, he asked if it "marches slowly", which I thought was a fascinating approach to conveying foreign dialogue in your native language.
If you want to have characters speaking a foreign language common approaches include:
All of these do fairly well. But I thought C. S. Forester's example was interesting because it made the English seem slightly stilted to give the impression of Hornblower speaking French imperfectly. Of course, I don't know if: the phrasing was perfectly normal and I imagined it; or it was chosen deliberately to include "march" which exists in English, but to remind us of the more-common word in the French translation to give the impression of speaking in french; or it's deliberately stilted, as if translated mechanically from _french_ to _english_ in order to give the impression of Hornblower speaking french _imperfectly_.
If you want to have characters speaking a foreign language common approaches include:
- Say that they spoke in the foreign language, and giving the dialogue in English
- Use a different quoatation-mark style (or even a different font)
- Throw in a few "mon ami" and "bonjour" into the dialogue to give the flavour
- Give the dialogue untranslated, but include enough translation in the text to give the meaning (this is common with classical allusions)
- Give the untranslated dialogue and include a footnote translation
- Give the untranslated dialogue, and assume the reader will understand all/enough
All of these do fairly well. But I thought C. S. Forester's example was interesting because it made the English seem slightly stilted to give the impression of Hornblower speaking French imperfectly. Of course, I don't know if: the phrasing was perfectly normal and I imagined it; or it was chosen deliberately to include "march" which exists in English, but to remind us of the more-common word in the French translation to give the impression of speaking in french; or it's deliberately stilted, as if translated mechanically from _french_ to _english_ in order to give the impression of Hornblower speaking french _imperfectly_.