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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_.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 01:09 pm (UTC)I'm reminded of the bit in Captain Corelli's Mandolin where a British pilot crash-lands on a Greek island, and tries to communicate using the ancient Greek he learned at school. This is rendered as Middle English. As he picks up more of modern Greek, his speech evolves into Shakespearean and then modern English.